The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies

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The Secret Commonwealth
of Elves Bvuns & Buries

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JSfblfotbfcque be Carabas

VOL. VIII

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Five hundred and fifty copies of this Edition have been
printed, five hundred of which are for sale.

\All rights reserved.]

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Ef>e Secret CommonSnealtfj of

Elvea, fauna, & fairiea

a Stalls to ifclfeJLote fc $ 0 gcf)ical Ueaeatcfj. ffifje
Eat bs Robert Bitft, f&.QL, fHtmaUt of
abetfoglt, 2LI0. 1691. Eijt Comment
bS Snbreto lang, jBJ.a.

3 . 9 . 1893

f

LONDON\ M.D.CCCXCIII. PUBLISHED BY DAVID
NUTT, IN THE STEAND

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SDetiicatfon

TO

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

O Louis! you that like them maist,
Ye’re far frae kelpie, wraith, and ghaist,
And fairy dames, no unco chaste,

And haunted cell

Among a heathen clan ye’re placed,

That kens na hell!

Ye hae nae heather, peat, nor birks,

Nae troot in a’ your bumies lurks,

There are nae bonny U.P. kirks,

An awfu’ place!

Nane kens the Covenant o’ Works
Frae that of Grace!

But whiles, maybe, to them ye’ll read
Blads o’ the Covenanting creed,

And whiles their pagan wames ye’ll feed
On halesome parritch;

And syne ye’ll gar them learn a screed
O’ the Shorter Carritch.

Yet thae uncovenanted shavers
Hae rowth, ye say, o’ clash and clavers
O’ gods and etins—auld wives’ havers,
But their delight;

The voice o* him that tells them quavers
Just wi’ fair fright.

And ye might tell, ayont the faem,

Thae Hieland clashes o’ oor hame.

To speak the truth, I tak’ na shame
To half believe them;

And, stamped wi’ Tusitala’s name,
They’ll a’ receive them.

DEDICATION .

vi

And folk to come, ayont the sea.

May hear the yowl of the Banshie,

And frae the water-kelpie flee,

Ere a’ things cease,

And island bairns may stolen be
By the Folk o’ Peace.

Faith, they might steal me, wi’ ma will,
And, ken’d I ony Fairy hill,

I’d lay me down there, snod and still,
Their land to win,

For, man, I’ve maistly had my fill
O’ this world’s din.

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Zpe JFsitg jWini0ter,

IN MEMORY OP
The Rev. ROBERT KIRK,

WHO WENT TO HIS OWN HERD, AND ENTERED INTO
THE LAND OF THE PEOPLE OF PEACE,

IN THE YEAR OF GRACE SIXTEEN
HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO,

AND OF HIS AGE
FIFTY-TWO.

People of Peace! A peaceful man,

Well worthy of your love was he,

Who, while the roaring Garry ran
Red with the life-blood of Dundee,

While coats were turning, crowns were falling,
Wandered along his valley still.

And heard your mystic voices calling
From fairy knowe and haunted hill.

He heard, he saw, he knew too well
The secrets of your fairy clan;

You stole him from the haunted dell,

Who never more was seen of man.

Now far from heaven, and safe from hell,
Unknown of earth, he wanders free.

Would that he might return and tell
Of his mysterious company!

For we have tired the Folk of Peace ;

No more they tax our corn and oil;

Their dances on the moorland cease,

The Brownie stints his wonted toil.

No more shall any shepherd meet
The ladies of the fairy clan,

Nor are their deathly kisses sweet
On lips of any earthly man.

And half I envy him who now,

Clothed in her Court’s enchanted 'green,

By moonlit loch or mountain’s brow
Is Chaplain to the Fairy Queen.

vii

A. L.

KIRK’S

SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

INTRODUCTION.

I. Thb History op the Book and Author.

The bibliography of the following little tract is
extremely obscure. The title-page of the edition
of 1815, which we reproduce, gives the date as
1691. Sir Walter Scott says in his Demonology
and Witchcraft (1830, p. 163, note), “It was
printed with the author’s name in 1691, and re¬
printed, in 1815, for Longman & Co.” But was
there really a printed edition of 1691 ? Scott
says that he never met with an example. Re¬
search in our great libraries has discovered none,
and there is none save that of 1815 at Abbots¬
ford. The reprint, of one hundred copies, was
made, as it states, from no printed text, but from
“ a manuscript copy preserved in the Advocates’
Library.” On page 45 of the edition of 1815,

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INTRODUCTION.

at the end of the comments on Lord Tarbott’s
Letters, there is a “Note by the Transcriber”
—that is, the person who wrote out the manu¬
script in the Advocates’ Library: “ See the rest
in a little manuscript belonging to Coline Kirk.”
Now Coline or Colin Kirk, Writer to the Signet,
was the son of the Rev. Mr. Kirk, author of the
tract. If the son had his father’s book only in
manuscript, it seems very probable that it was
not printed in 1691; that the title-page is only
the title-page of a manuscript. Till some printed
text of 1691 is discovered, we may doubt, then,
whether the hundred copies published in 1815,
and now somewhat rare, be not the original
printed edition. The editor has a copy of 1815,
but it is the only one which he has met with
for sale.

The Rev. Robert Kirk, the author of The
Secret Commonwealth , was a student of theology
at St. Andrews: his Master’s degree, however,
he took at Edinburgh. He was (and this is
notable) the youngest and seventh son of Mr.
James Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, the place
familiar to all readers of Rob Roy. As a seventh
son, he was, no doubt, specially gifted, and in
The Secret Commonwealth he lays some stress on

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INTRODUCTION. xi

the mystic privileges of such birth. There may
he “some secret virtue in the womb of the
parent, which increaseth until the seventh son
be borne, and decreaseth by the same degree
afterwards.” It would not surprise us if Mr.
Kirk, no less than the Rev. Robert Blair of
Si Andrews (1650-60), could heal scrofula by
the touch, like royal persons—Charles III. in
Italy, for example. As is well known to all,
the House of Brunswick has no such powers.
However this may have been, Mr. Kirk was
probably drawn, by his seventh sonship, to a
more careful study of psychical phenomena than
most of his brethren bestowed. Little is known
of his life. He was minister originally of Bal-
quidder, whence, in 1685, he was transferred to
Aberfoyle. This was no Covenanting district,
and there is no bigotry in Mr. Kirk’s disserta¬
tion. He was employed on an “ Irish ” trans¬
lation of the Bible, and he published a Psalter
in Gaelic (1684). He married, first, Isobel,
daughter of Sir Colin Campbell of Mochester,
who died in 1680, and, secondly, the daughter
of Campbell of Fordy: this lady survived him.
From his connection with Campbells, we may
misdoubt him for a Whig. By his first wife he

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INTRODUCTION.

xii

had a son, Colin Kirk, W.S.; by his second
wife, a son who was minister of Dornoch. He
died (if he did die, which is disputed) in 1692,
aged about fifty-one; his tomb was inscribed—

ROBERTUS KIRK, A.M.

Linguae Hiberaiae Lumen.

The tomb, in Scott’s time, was to be seen in
the east end of the churchyard of Aberfoyle;
but the ashes of Mr. Kirk are not there. His
successor, the Rev. Dr. Grahame, in his Sketches
of Picturesque Scefiery , informs us that, as Mr.
Kirk was walking on a dun-shi, or fairy-hill, in
his neighbourhood, he sunk down in a swoon,
which was taken for death. “ After the cere¬
mony of a seeming funeral,” writes Scott (op.
cit. y p. 105), “the form of the Rev. Robert
Kirk appeared to a relation, and commanded
him to go to Grahame of Duehray. ‘Say to
Duchray, who is my cousin as well as your own,
that I am not dead, but a captive in Fairyland;
and only one chance remains for my liberation.
When the posthumous child, of which my wife
has been delivered since my disappearance, shall
be brought to baptism, I will appear in the
room, when, if Duchray shall throw over my

INTRODUCTION . xiii

head the knife or dirk which he holds in his
hand, I may be restored to society; but if this
is neglected, I am lost for ever. , ” True to his
tryst, Mr. Kirk did appear at the christening,
and “was visibly seen;” but Duchray was so
astonished that he did not throw his dirk over
the head of the appearance, and to society Mr.
Kirk has not yet been restored. This is ex¬
tremely to be regretted, as he could now add
matter of much importance to his treatise.
Neither history nor tradition has more to tell
about Mr. Robert Kirk, who seems to have been
a man of good family, a student, and, as his
book shows, an innocent and learned person.

IL The Secret Commonwealth.

The tract, of which the reader now knows the
history, is a little volume of somewhat singular
character. Written in 1691 by the Rev. Robert
Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, it is a kind of
metaphysic of the Fairy world. Having lived
through the period of the sufferings of the Kirk,
the author might have been expected either to
neglect Fairyland altogether, or to regard it as
a mere appanage of Satan’s kingdom—a “ bum-

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XIV

INTRODUCTION.

ing question ” indeed, for some of the witches
who suffered at Presbyterian hands were merely
narrators of popular tales about the state of the
dead. That she trafficked with the dead, and
from a ghost won a medical recipe for the cure
of Archbishop Adamson of St. Andrews, was
the charge against Alison Pearson. “ The
Bischope keipit his castle lyk a tod in his holl,
seik of a disease of grait fetiditie, and oftymes
under the cure of women suspected of witch¬
craft, namlie, ane wha confessit hir to haiff
leamit medecin of ane callit Mr. Wilyeam Sim-
sone, that apeired divers tymes to hir efter his
dead, and gaiff hir a buik. . . . She was execut
in Edinbruche for a witch” (James Melville’s
Diary, p. 137, 1583). The Archbishop, like
other witches, had a familiar in the form of a
hare, which once ran before him down the
street. These were the beliefs of men of learn¬
ing like James, the nephew and companion of
Andrew Melville. Even in our author’s own
time, Archbishop Sharp was accused of enter¬
taining “ the muckle black Deil ” in his study at
midnight, and of being “ levitated ” and dancing
in the air. This last feat, creditable to a saint or
a Neo-Platonist like Plotinus, was reckoned for

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INTRODUCTION.

xv

sin to Archbishop Sharp, as may be read in
WodroVs Analecta. Thus all Fairydom was
commonly looked on as under the same guilt as
witchcraft Yet Mr. Kirk of Aberfoyle, living
among Celtic people, treats the land of faery as
a mere fact in nature, a world with its own
laws, which he investigates without fear of the
Accuser of the Brethren. We may thus regard
him, even more than Wodrow, as an early
student in folk-lore and in psychical research
—topics which run into each other—and he
shows nothing of the usual persecuting dispo¬
sition. Nor, again, is Mr. Kirk like Glanvil
and Henry More. He does not, save in his
title-page and in one brief passage, make super¬
stitious creeds or psychical phenomena into
arguments and proofs against modem Sadducees.
Firm in his belief, he treats his matter in a
scientific spirit, as if he were dealing with
generally recognised physical phenomena.

Our study of Mr. Kirk’s little tractate must
have a double aspect. It must be an essay
partly on folk-lore, on popular beliefs, their re¬
lation to similar beliefs in other parts of the
world, and the residuum of fact, preserved by
tradition, which they may contain. On the

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INTRODUCTION .

other hand, as mental phenomena are in ques¬
tion—such things as premonitions, hallucinations,
abnormal or unusual experiences generally—a
criticism of Mr. Kirk must verge on “ Psychical
Research.” The Society organised for that
difficult subject certainly takes a vast deal of
trouble about all manner of odd reports and
strange visions. It “ transfers ” thoughts of no
value, at a great expense of time and of serious
hard work. But, as far as the writer has read
the Society’s Proceedings, it “takes no keep,”
as Malory says, of these affairs in their historical
aspect. Whatever hallucination, or illusion, or
imposture, or the “ subliminal self ” can do to¬
day, has always been done among peoples in
every degree of civilisation. An historical study
of the topic, as contained in trials for witchcraft,
in the reports of travellers and missionaries, in
the works of the seventeenth-century Platonists,
More, Glanvill, Sinclair, and others, and in the
rare tracts such as The Devil in Glen Luce and
The Just Devil of Woodstock, not to mention
Lavater, Wierus, Thyraeus, Reginald Scott, and
so on, is as necessary to the psychologist as to
the folk-lorist. 1 If there be an element of fact
1 Note (a), p. 8x.

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INTRODUCTION.

XVII

in modem hypnotic experiments (a matter on
which I have really no opinion), it is plain that
old magic and witchcraft are not mere illusions,
or not commonplace illusions. The subliminal
self has his stroke in these affairs. Assuredly
the Psychologists should have an historical de¬
partment. The evidence which they would find
is, of course, vitiated in many obvious ways, but
the evidence contains much that coincides with
that of modem times, and the coincidence can
hardly be designed—that is to say, the old
Highland seers had no design of abetting modem
inquiry. It may be, however, that their methods
and ideas have been traditionally handed down
to modem “ sensitives ” and “ mediums.” At all
events, here is an historical chapter, if it be but
a chapter in “The History of Human Error.”
These wide and multifarious topics can only be
touched on lightly in this essay; the author will
be content if he directs the attention of students
with more leisure and a better library of diablerie
to the matter. But first we glance at The Secret
Commonwealth as folk-lorists.

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xviii INTRODUCTION .

III. “The Subterranean Inhabitants.”

Mr. Kirk’s first chapter, “ Of the Subterranean
Inhabitants,” naturally suggests the recent specu¬
lations of Mr. MacRitchie. The gist of Mr.
MacRitchie’s Testimony of Tradition is that
there once was a race of earth-dwellers in this
island; that their artificial caves still exist; that
this people survive in popular memory as “ the
legendary Feens,” and as the Pechts of popular
tales, in which they are regarded as dwarfs.
“ The Pechs were unco wee bodies, hut terrible
strang.” Here, then, it might be thought that
we have the origin of Fairy beliefs. There really
was, on this showing, a dwarf race, who actually
did live in the “ fairy-hills,” or howes, now com¬
monly looked on as sepulchral monuments.

There is much in Mr. MacRitchie’s theory
which does not commend itself to me. The
modem legends of Pechts as builders of Glasgow
Cathedral, for example, do not appear to prove
such a late survival of a race known as Piets, but
are on a level with the old Greek belief that the
Cyclopes built Mycenae (Testimony of Tradition ,
p. 72). Granting, for the sake of discussion,

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INTRODUCTION .

xix

that there were still Piets or Pechs in Galloway
when Glasgow Cathedral was built (in the
twelfth century), these wild Galloway men,
scourges of the English Border, were the very
last people to be employed as masons. The
truth is that the recent Scotch have entirely
forgotten the ages of mediaeval art. Accustomed
to the ill-built bams of a robbed and stinted
Kirk, they looked on the Cathedral as no work
of ordinary human beings. It was a creation
of the Pechts, as Mycenae and Tiryns of the
mighty walls were creations of the Cyclopes.
By another coincidence, the well-known story
of the last Pecht, who refuses to divulge the
secret of the heather ale, is told in the Yolsunga
Saga, and in the - Nibelungenlied , of the Last
Niflung. Again, the breaking of a bar of iron,
which he takes for a human arm, by the last
Pecht is a tale current of the Drakos in modem
Greece (see Chambers's Popular Traditions of
Scotland for the last Pecht). I cannot believe
that the historical Piets were a set of half-
naked, dwarfish savages, hairy men living un¬
derground. These are the topics of Sir Arthur
Wardour and Monkbams. Mr. W. F. Skene
may be said to have put the historic Piets in

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INTRODUCTION.

their proper place as the ancestors of the High¬
landers. The Pecht of legend answers to the
Drakos and the Cyclopes : the beliefs about his
habits may have been suggested by the tumuli,
still more by the brocks: it seems less probable
that they represent an historical memory. As
to the Irish “ Feens,” the topic can only be dis¬
cussed by Celtic scholars. But it does not follow,
because the leader of the Feens seemed a dwarf
among giants, that therefore his people were a
dwarfish race. 1 The story proves no more than
Gulliver’s Travels.

Once more, we often read in the Sagas of a
hero like Grettir, who opens a howe, has a
conflict with a “ barrow-wight,” as Mr. Morris
calls the “ howe-dweller,” and wins gold and
weapons. But the dweller in the howe is often
merely the able-bodied ghost of the Norseman,
a known and named character, who is buried
there; he is not a Pecht. Thus, as it seems to
me, the Scotch and Celts possessed a theory of
a legendary people, as did the Greeks. Whether
any actual traditions of an earlier, perhaps a
Finnish race, was at the bottom of the legend,
is an obscure question. But, having such a
1 The Testimony of Tradition , p. 75.

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INTRODUCTION.

xxi

belief, the Scotch easily discovered homes for
the fancied people in the sepulchral howes:
they “combined their information.” The Fairies,
again, are composite creatures. As they came
to births and christenings, and as Norse wise-
wives (as in the Saga of Eric the Red) prophe¬
sied at festivals, Mr. MacRitchie combines his
own information. The Wise-wife is a Finn
woman, and Finn and Fairy amalgamate. But
the Egyptians, as in the Tale of Two Brothers
(Maspero, Contes Egyptians ), had their Hathors,
who came and prophesied at births; the Greeks
had their Moerse, as in the story of Meleager
and the burning brand. The Hathors and
Moerae play, in ancient Egypt and in ancient
Greece, the part of Fairies at the christening,
but surely they were not Finnish women ! In
short, though a memory of some old race may
have mingled in the composite Fairy belief, this
is at most but an element in the whole, and the-
part played by ancestral spirits, naturally earth-
dwellers, is probably more important. Bishop
Callaway has pointed out, in the preface to his
Zulu Tales , that what the Highlanders say of
the Fairies the Zulus say of “the Ancestors.”
In many ways, as when persons carried off to

XXII

INTRODUCTION.

Fairyland meet relations or friends lately de¬
ceased, who warn them, as Persephone and
Steenie Steenson were warned, to eat no food
in this place, Fairyland is clearly a memory of
the pre-Christian Hades. There are other ele¬
ments in the complex mass of Fairy tradition,
but Chaucer knew “the Fairy Queen Proser¬
pina,” as Campion calls her, and it is plain
that in very fact “the dread Persephone,” the
“ Queen over death and the dead,” had dwindled
into the lady who borrows Tamlane in the
ballad. Indeed Kirk mentions but does not
approve of this explanation, “that those sub¬
terranean people are departed souls.” How, as
was said, the dead are dwellers under earth.
The worshippers of Chthonian Demeter (Achaia)
beat the earth with wands; so does the Zulu
sorcerer when he appeals to the Ancestors. And
a Macdonald in Moidart, being pressed for his
rent, beat the earth, and cried aloud to his dead
chief, “ Simon, hear me; you were always good
to me .” 1

1 In Father Macdonald’s book on Moidart*

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INTRODUCTION. xxiii

IV. Fairyland and Hades.

Thus, to my mind at least, the Subterranean
Inhabitants of Mr. Kirk’s book are not so much
a traditional recollection of a real dwarfish race
living underground (a hypothesis of Sir Walter
Scott’s), as a lingering memory of the Chthonian
beings, “ the Ancestors.” A good case in point
is that of Bessie Dunlop, of Dairy, in Ayr¬
shire, tried on 8th November 1576 for witch¬
craft. She dealt in medicine and white
magic, and obtained her prescriptions from
Thomas Reid, slain at Pinkie fight (1547), who
often appeared to her, and tried to lead her
off to Fairyland. She, like Alison Pearson, was
“convict and burnt” (Scott’s Demonology , p.
146, and Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials). Both
ladies knew the Fairy Queen, and Alison Pearson
beheld Maitland of Lethington, and Buccleugh,
in Fairyland, as is recounted in a rhymed satire
on Archbishop Adamson (Dalzell’s Scottish Poems ,
p. 321). These are excellent proofs that Fairy¬
land was a kind of Hades, or home of the dead.

Mr. Kirk, who speaks of the Sleagh Maith as
confidently as if he were discussing the habits
of some remote race which he has visited, credits

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XXIV

INTRODUCTION.

them, as the Greek gods were credited, with
the power of nourishing themselves on some fine
essential part of human sacrifice, of human food,
“some fine spirituous Liquors, that peirce like
pure Air and Oil, on the poyson or substance of
Corns and Liquors/* Others, more gross, steal
the actual grain, “as do Crowes and Mice.”
They are heard hammering in the howes: as
Brownies they enter houses and cleanse the
hearths. They are the Domovoys, as the Rus¬
sians call them. John Major, in his exposition
of St. Matthew (1518, fol. xlviii.), gives perhaps
the oldest account of Brownies, in a believing
temper. Major styles them Fauni or brobne.
They thrash as much grain in one night as
twenty men could do. They throw stones about
among people sitting by the fire. Whether they
can predict future events is doubtful (see Mr.
Constable in Major's Greater Britain, } p. xxx.
Edinburgh, 1892). To us they seem not much
remote from the Roman Lares—spirits of the
household, of the hearth. In all these creatures
Mr. Kirk recognises “ an abstruse People,” who
were before our more substantial race, whose
furrows are still to be seen on the hill-tops.
They never were, to his mind, plain palpable

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INTRODUCTION.

XXV

folk; they are only visible, in their quarterly
Sittings, to men of the second sight. That gift
of vision includes not only power to see distant
or future events, but the viewless forms of air.
To shun the Sittings, men visit church on the
Srst Sunday of the quarter: then they will be
hallowed against elf-shots, “these Arrows that
Sy in the dark.” As is well known, superstition
explained the Neolithic arrow-heads as Fairy
weapons; it does not follow that a tradition of a
Neolithic people suggested the belief in Fairies.
But we cannot deny absolutely that some such
memory of an earlier race, a shy and fugitive
people who used weapons of stone, may con¬
ceivably play its part in the Fairy legend.

Thence Mr. Kirk glides into that singular
theory of savage metaphysics which somewhat
resembles the Platonic doctrine of Ideas. All
things, in Bed Indian belief, have somewhere
their ideal counterpart or “Father.” Thus a
donkey, when first seen, was regarded as “ the
Father” or archetype “of Babbits.” Now the
second-sighted behold the “Double-man,” “Dop-
pel-ganger,” “Astral Body,” “Wraith,” or what
you will, of a living person, and that is merely
his counterpart in the abstruse world. The

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XXVI

INTRODUCTION.

industry of the Psychical Society has collected
much material—evidence, whatever its value, for
the existence of the Double-man. We may call it
a hallucination, which does not greatly increase
our knowledge. From personal experience, and
the experience of friends, I am constrained to
believe that we may think we see a person who
is not really present to the view—who may be
in the next room, or downstairs, or a hundred
miles off. This experience has occurred to the
sane, the unimaginative, the healthy, the free
from superstition, and in circumstances by no
means mystic—for example, when the person
supposed to be seen was not dying, nor distressed,
nor in any but the most normal condition. In¬
deed, the cases when there was nothing abnormal
in the state of the person seen are far more
numerous, in my personal knowledge, than those
in which the person seen was dying, or dead, or
excited. The reverse appears to be the rule in
the experience of the Psychical Society. “ The
actual proportion of coincidental to non-coinci-
dental cases, after all deduction for possible
sources of error, was in fact such that the pro¬
bability against the supposition of chance coin¬
cidence became enormous, on the assumption of

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XXVll

ordinary accuracy on the part of informants”
(Professor Sidgwick, Proc. S.P.R, vol. viii.
p. 607). Some 17,000 answers were collected.
We must apparently accept these facts as not
very abnormal nor very unusual, and doubt¬
less as capable of some subjective explana¬
tion. But when such things occurred among
imaginative and uneducated Highlanders, they
became foundations and proofs of the doctrine
of second sight—proofs, too, of the primitive
metaphysical doctrine of counterparts and corre -
spondances. “ They avouch that every Element
and different state of Being have Animals resem¬
bling these of another Element.” By persons
not knowing this, “the Roman invention of
guardian Angels particularly assigned ” has been
promulgated. The guardian Angel of the Roman
superstition is merely the Double or Co-walker
—the type (in the viewless world) of the man
in the apparent world. Thus are wraiths and
ghosts explained by our Presbyterian psycholo¬
gist and his Highland flock. All things univer¬
sally have their types, their reflex: a man’s
type, or reflex, or “ co-walker ” may be seen at a
distance from or near him during his life—nay,
may be seen after his death. The gifted man of

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xxviii

second sight can tell the substantial figure from
the airy counterpart. Sometimes the reflex
anticipates the action of the reality: " was often
seen of old to enter a House, by which the people
knew that the Person of that Likeness was to
visit them in a few days.” It may have occurred
to most of us to meet a person in the street
whom we took for an acquaintance. It is not
he, but we meet the real man a few paces farther
on. Thus a distinguished officer, at home on
leave, met a friend, as he tells me, in Piccadilly.
The other passed without notice: the officer
hesitated about following him, did not, and in
some fifty yards met his man. There is pro¬
bably no more in this than resemblance and
coincidence, but this is the kind of thing which
was worked by the Highlanders into their meta¬
physics. 1

The end of the Co-walker is obscure. “ This

1 A much odder case is reported. Two young men
photographed a reach of a river. In the photograph,
when printed, was visible the dead body of a woman
floating on the stream. The water was dragged. Nothing
was found; but two or three days later a girl drowned
herself in the pool! As the Reports of the Psychical
Society sometimes say, “ no confirmation has been ob¬
tained ; ” but this is a pleasing instance of the Reflex,
and of second sight in a photographic camera.

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XXIX

Copy, Echo, or living Picture goes att last to
his own Herd.” Thus Ghosts are short-lived,
and, according to M. d’Assier on the Manners
of Posthumous Man (L\Homme Posthume ),
seldom survive for more than a century. By an
airy being of this kind the Highlanders explained
the false or morbid appetite. A “joint-eater”
inhabited the patient; “he feeds two when he
eats.” As a rule, the Fairies get their food as
witches do—take “the Pith and Milk from
their Neighbours’ Cows unto their own chiese-
hold, throw a Hair-tedder, at a great distance,
by Airt Magic, only drawing a spigot fastened
in a Post, which will bring Milk as farr as a
Bull will be heard to roar.” This is illustrated
in the drinking scene in Faust . This kind of
charge is familiar in trials for witchcraft.

In accordance with the whole metaphysics of
the system of doubles, which are parasites on
humanity, is the superstition of nurses stolen by
Fairies, and of children kidnapped while change¬
lings are left in their place. The latter accounts
for sudden decline and loss of health by a child;
he is not the original child, but a Fairy brat.
To guard against this, bread (as human food
hateful to Fairies—so the Kanekas carry a boiled

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INTRODUCTION .

yam about at night), or the Bible, or iron is
placed in the bed of childbirth. “Iron scares
spirits,” as the scholiast says of the drawn sword
of Odysseus in Hades. The Fairy bride, in
Wales, vanishes on being touched with iron.
This belief probably came in when iron was a
new, rare, and mysterious metaL The mortal
nurses in Fairyland are pleasantly illustrated by
the ballad

“ I heard a cow lowe,

A bonny, bonny cow lowe,”

in C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s Ballad Book . 1 This
part of the superstition is not easy to elucidate.
Kirk repeats the well-known tales of the blinding
of the mortal who saw too clearly “by making
use of their Oyntments.” Well-known examples
occur in Gervase of Tilbury, and are cited in
Scott's note on Tamlane in the Border Min¬
strelsy. As Homer fables of the dead, their
speech is a kind of whistling like the cry of
bats—another indication of the pre-Christian
Hades. 2 They have feasts and burials; and
Pashley, in his Travels in Crete , tells the well-
known Border story of a man who fired on a

1 It is also published in Mrs. Graham Tomson’s Border
Ballads (Walter Scott).

2 Note (6), p. 8i.

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Fairy bridal, and heard a voice cry, “Ye have
slain the bonny bridegroom.” It is, of course,
to be noted that the modern Greek superstition
of the Nereids, who carry off mortal girls to
dance with them till they pine away, answers to
some of our Fairy legends, while it will hardly
be maintained that the Nereids are a memory of
pre-historic Finns. “Antic corybantic jollity”
is a note of Nereids, as well as of the Sleagh
Maith. “ The Inconvenience of their mccubi”
the Fairy girls who make love to young men, is
well known in the Breton ballad, Le Sieur Nan .
The same superstition is current among the
Kanekas of New Caledonia. My cousin, Mr.
Atkinson, was visited by a young Kaneka, who
twice or thrice returned to take leave of him
with much emotion. When Mr. Atkinson asked
what was the matter, the lad said that he had
just met, as he thought, the girl of his heart
in the forest. After a scene of dalliance she
vanished, and he knew that she was a forest
Fairy, and that he must die in three days,
which he did. This is the “inconvenience of
their succubi,” regretted by Mr. Kirk. Thus it
appears that the mass of these opinions is not
local, nor Celtic merely, but of world-wide

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INTRODUCTION.

diffusion. Thus Sir Walter Scott observes of the
Afghans and Highlanders, “ Their superstitions
are the same, or nearly so. The Gholee Beabacan
(demons of the desert) resemble the Boddach of
the Highlanders, ‘who walked the heath at
midnight and at noon*” ( Quarterly Review , xiv.
289). Again, Mr. Kirk says that “ Were-wolves
and Witches* true Bodies are (by the union of
the spirit of Nature that runs thorow all, echoing
and doubling the Blow towards another) wounded
at home, when the astrial or assumed Bodies are
stricken elsewhere.** Thus, if a witch-hare is
shot, the witch’s real body is hurt in the same
part; and Lafitau, in North America, found that
when a Huron shot a witch-bird, the real magi¬
cian was stricken in the same place. The theory
that the Fairies appear as “a little rough Dog**
is illustrated by the Welsh Dogs of HelL
Blackwood '8 Magazine for 1818 contains many
examples of these Hell-dogs, which are often
invested in a sheet of fire, as Rink says is the
case among the Eskimo. Take a modem in¬
stance. “ Mr. F. A. Paley and friend, walking
home at night on a lonely road, see a large black
dog rise from it, slowly walk to the side, and
disappear. They search in vain. Mr. Paley

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hears subsequently that this mysterious dog is
the terror of the neighbourhood, but no such
real dog is known.” Date, summer 1837 (Joum.
of S.P.B., Feb. 1893, p. 31).

The dwellings of these airy shadows of man¬
kind are, naturally, “Fairie Hills.” There is
such a hill, the Fairy Hill at Aberfoyle, where
Mr. Kirk resided: Baillie Nicol Jarvie describes
its legends in an admirable passage in Mob Roy .
Mr. MacRitchie says, “ How much of this ‘howe*
is artificial, or whether any of it is, remains to
be discovered.” It is much larger than most
artificial tumuli According to Mr. Kirk, the
Highlanders " superstitiously believe the souls
of their Predecessors to dwell” in the fairy-hills.
“ And for that end, say they, a Mote or Mount
was dedicate beside every Churchyard, to receive
the souls till their adjacent bodies arise, and so
become as a Fairy hill.” Here the Highland
philosophers have conspicuously put the cart
before the horse. The tumuli are much older
than the churches, which were no doubt built
beside them because the place had a sacred
character. Two very good examples may be
seen at Dairy, on the Ken, in Galloway, and at

Parton, on Loch Ken. The grassy howes are

c

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INTRODUCTION.

large and symmetrical, and the modern Presby¬
terian churches occupy old sites; at Parton
there are ruins of the ancient Catholic church.
Round the tumulus at Dairy, according to the
local form of the Marchen of Hesione, a great
dragon used to coil in triple folds, before it was
killed by the blacksmith. Nobody, perhaps,
can regard these tumuli, and many like them,
as anything but sepulchral. On the road between
Balantrae, in Ayrshire, and Stranraer, there is a
beautiful tumulus above the sea, which at once
recalls the barrow above the main that Elpenor
in the Odyssey , asked Odysseus to build for him,
“the memorial of a luckless man.” In the
Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, the ghost
of a hero who fell at Troy appears to the adven¬
turers on a tumulus like this of the Ayrshire
coast. In speaking of these barrows Mr. Kirk
tells how, during a famine about 1676, two
women had a vision of a treasure hid in a fairy-
hill. This they excavated, and discovered some
coins “ of good money.” The great gold corslet
of the British Museum is said to have been
found in Wales, where tradition spoke of a ghost
in golden armour which haunted a hillock. The
hillock was excavated, and the golden corslet,

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XXXV

like the Shakespearian bricks, is “ alive to
testify ” to the truth of the story.

Y. Fairies and Psychical Research.

The Fairy belief, we have said, is a composite
thing. On the materials given by tradition,
such as the memory, perhaps, of a pre-historic
race, and by old religion, as in the thoughts
about the pre-Christian Hades, poetry and fancy
have been at work. Consumption, lingering
disease, unexplained disappearances, sudden
deaths, have been accounted for by the agency
of the Fairies, or People of Peace. If the
superstition included no more than this, we
might regard it as a natural result of imagina¬
tion, dealing with facts quite natural in the
ordinary course of things. But there are ele¬
ments in the belief which cannot be so easily
dismissed. We must ask whether the abnormal
phenomena which have been so frequently dis¬
cussed, fought over, forgotten, and revived, do
not enter into the general mass of folk-lore.
They appear most notably in the two branches
of Browniedom—of “Pixies,” as they say in
Devonshire, who haunt the house, and in the

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INTRODUCTION.

alleged examples of the second sight. The
former topic is the more obscure, if not the
more curious. Let us examine the occurrences,
then, which may have begotten the belief in
Brownies, and in house-haunting Pixies or
Fairies. These appearances may be alleged, on
one hand, to be actual facts in Nature, the
workings of some yet unexplained forces; or
they may merely be the consequences of some
very old traditional method of imposture, vulgar
in itself, but still historical That form of im¬
posture, again, may be wrought either by con¬
scious agents, or unconsciously and automatically
by persons under the influence of somnambulism;
or, finally, the phenomena may in various cases
be due to any one of these three agencies, all of
which may possibly be veroe causes , as conscious
imposture and trickery is certainly one vera
causa.

In Mr. Kirk’s book we meet “the invisible
Wights which haunt Houses,. . . throw great
Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood at the In¬
habitants,” but “ hurt them not at all.” As we
have said, Major (1518) calls these wights
“ Fauni or Brobne”—that is, Brownies—and
says that they thrash as much grain in one

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INTRODUCTION. xxxvii

night as twenty men could do, and throw
stones about. The legend of their working was
common in Scotland, and a correspondent says
that in Devonshire the belief in Pixies who set
the house in order exists among the grand-
parents of the present generation. But the
sportive is more common than the kindly aspect
of Brownies. Through history we constantly
find them causing objects to move without
visible contact, and “ acting in sport, like Buf¬
foons and Drolls.” In his Letters on Demonology
(p. 377) Scott gives instances where the buffoon
or droll was detected, and confessed that the
rattlings of plates and movements of objects
were caused by an apparatus of threads or horse¬
hair. -He also quotes the famous doings of
“ The Just Devil of Woodstock ” in 1649, which
so perplexed and discomfited the Cromwellian
Commissioners. He accounts for those annoy¬
ances by the confessions of Joe Collins of Oxford,
“Funny Joe,” which he quotes from Hone’s
Every-Day Book y while Hone quotes from the
British Magazine of 1747. But the writer in
the British Magazine gives no references or
authorities for the authenticity of Funny Joe’s
confessions, nor even for the existence of Joseph.

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xxxviii INTRODUCTION.

Scott could not find his original in the pamphlets
of the British Museum, and some of the state¬
ments attributed to Joe do not tally with the
official account, and other contemporary docu¬
ments collected in Sir Walter’s Woodstock. Joe
pretends, for example, to have been secretary to
the Commission under the name of Giles Sharpe;
hut in the other accounts the secretary is named
Browne. A Royalist Brownie or Polter-geist
lies under shrewd suspicion, but Joe’s own
existence is unproved, and his alleged evidence
is of no value. However, no sane person can
dream of doubting that many a Brownie has
been as much in flesh and blood as the Brownie
of Bodsbeck in Hogg’s story.

There remain the less easily explicable tales
of strange and humorous disturbances, accom¬
panied by loud sounds, rappings, the moving of
objects without visible contact, and so forth. 1
Perhaps we may best examine these by taking
modem instances, collected by the Psychical
Society, in the first place, and then comparing
them with cases recorded at distant times and
in remote places. Some curious common features

1 Many instances may be read of in a little anonymous
work, Obeah. The scene is Hayti.

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INTRODUCTION.

XXXIX

will be observed, and the evidence has at least
the value of undesigned coincidence. Glanvil,
Telfair (minister of Rerrick), the Wesleys, Dr.
Adam Clarke, Increase Mather, were not modem
students of psychical research. The modem
Psychical Researchers, we fear, are not students
of old legendary lore, which they dismiss on
evidence not first-hand nor scientifically valid.
Thus they do not seem to be aware that they
are describing, almost in identical terms, pheno¬
mena identical with those noted by Telfair,
Mather, Lavater, and the rest, and by those
ancients attributed to devils. The modem re¬
corders are not consciously copying from old
accounts; the coincidences therefore have their
value, as proving that certain phenomena have
occurred and recurred. Now those phenomena
may be due to conscious or to hysterical impos¬
ture, but they have been frequent and common
enough to keep alive, and probably to originate,
a part of the Fairy belief—that part which is
concerned with Brownies and house-haunting
Pixies, or Domovoys. These, again, correspond
to the tricky beings described by Mr. Leland in
his Etruscan Remains as survivals of old Roman
and Etruscan popular religions, while we find

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INTRODUCTION.

similar occurrences in the Empire of the Incas
not long after the Spanish conquest of Peru. 1

Beginning, then, with what is nearest to us in
time, we take Mr. F. W. H. Myers’s essays “ On
the Alleged Movement of Objects without Con¬
tact, occurring not in the Presence of a Paid
Medium.” 2 The alleged phenomena are, of
course, as common as blackberries in the pre¬
sence of paid mediums, but are to the last degree
untrustworthy. Even when there is no paid
medium present, the mere contagious excitement
which is said to be developed at seances makes
all that is thought to occur there a story to be
taken with plenty of salt. 3 One of Mr. Myers’s
examples was the result of stances, but it had
features of great importance for the argument.
It will be found in Proc. S. P. R ., voL xix. p. 189,
July 1891. The performers are Mr. C., Mrs.
C., and Mr. H. Mr. C. and Mrs. C. are spoken
of as good witnesses, known to Mr. Myers and
Professor Barrett. Mr. H.’s health has suffered
so much that he cannot be examined, and Mr.

1 Note (c), p. 82.

2 Proe . S. P. R, July 1891, February 1892.

8 As far as the author has watched sconces personally,
they have ended in nothing but “ giggling and making
giggle/*

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xli

H. is the person who interests ns here, for
reasons which will be given later. All three
were “ unbelievers ” in these matters. On the
second evening “ lights floated about the room,”
which was lit, apparently, by a full moon.
“ F.” (who is also “ H.”) felt cold hands touch¬
ing, and “hands” recur in the old pre-scientific
accounts. The three mages were holding hands
tightly at the time. Now Mr. H. had hitherto
been in excellent health, but after his chair was
dragged from under him, and he was “ thrown
down on the ground,” he went into “a trance.”
His watch and ring (on the finger of a hand held
by Mrs. C.) were carried to a remote part of
the room. H. leaves the circle and sits at the
window. Another figure walks through the
room. H. returns, is “ thrown down,” his coat
is dragged off, and his boots are discovered on a
distant sofa. He asks for “something from
home,” goes into a trance, a photograph locked
up by him at home is found on the table. His
wife, in town, “being quite ignorant of our
having had seances, told us that, at that very
hour, a fearful crash occurred in his bedroom.
The photograph vanished, and returned last
night, when H. was in a trance.” He is “ thrown

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INTRODUCTION.

down ” again. He has “ alternate fits of uncon¬
sciousness and raving delirium.” The home of
Mr. and Mrs. C. (not the house where they sat)
is vexed by “figures,” noises, blockings; “we
were sprinkled with water in the night,” haunted
by sounds of drums and horns, and so forth.
Before a “ manifestation,” “ we all felt a sudden
chill, like either a wave of intensely cold air
passing, or a rapid decrease of temperature.” 1

This is a disgusting story if Mr. H.'s health
was ruined by his presence at the performances.
The point, however, is that he did behave in
epileptic fashion while these events were in
progress. It is natural to suppose that, in his
“trances,” he may have been capable, uncon¬
sciously, of feats physically and morally impos¬
sible to him in his normal condition. This
explanation would not cover all the alleged oc¬
currences, but would account for many of them.

1 Some stances were held at - College, Oxford,

about 1875. The performers were aU athletic under¬
graduates. The breath of chill air was always felt
M before anything happened,” and, when the out-college
men had gone, the owner of the rooms, in his bed¬
chamber, was disturbed by the racket which continued
in the sitting-room. But I know not if he had sported
his oak!

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' We now take an ancient instance, similar
disturbances at Newberry, in New England, in
1679, similarly accompanied by the presence of
an epileptic patient. 1 The house of William
Morse was “strangely disquieted by a daemon.”
The inmates were Morse, his wife, and their
grandson, a boy whose age is not given. The
trouble began on December 3, with a sound of
heavy objects falling on the roof. On December
8, large stones and bricks “were thrown in at
the west end of the house . . . the bedstead
was lifted up from the floor, and the bed-staff
flung out of the window, and a cat was hurled
at the wife. A long staff danced up and down
in the chimney. The man’s wife put the staff
in the fire, but she could not hold it there, inas¬
much as it would forcibly fly out; yet after
much ado, with joynt strength, they made it to
bum. ... A chair flew about, and at last
lighted on the table, where victuals stood ready
to eat, and was likely to spoil all, only by a
nimble catching they saved some of their meat.
... A chest was removed from place to place,

1 An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Provi¬
dences, by Increase Mather. Boston, 1684; London,
Reeves & Turner, 1890, pp. IOI-III.

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INTRODUCTION.

no hand touching it. Two keys would fly
about, making a loud noise by knocking against
each other. ... As they lay in bed with their
little boy between them, a great stone from the
floor of the loft was thrown upon the man’s
stomach, and he turning it down upon the floor,
it was once more thrown upon him.” On Janu¬
ary 23, 1680, “his ink-horn was taken away
from him while he was writing ” (he was keeping
a diary of these events), “ and when by all his
seeking he could not find it, at last he saw it
drop out of the air, down by the fire. . . .
February 2, while he and his boy were eating of
cheese, the pieces which he cut were wrested from
them. . . . But as for the boy, he was a great
sufferer in these afflictions, for on the 18th of
December he, sitting by his grandfather, was
hurried into great motions. The man made him
stand between his legs, but the chair danced
up and down, and was like to have cast both
man and boy into the fire, and the child was
tossed about in such a manner as that they
feared his brains would have been beaten out.”

All these contortions of the boy were appa¬
rently what M. Charcot calls downisms . 1 When
1 Diseases of the Nervous System, iil. 249. London, 1890.

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INTRODUCTION . xlv

taken to a doctor’s house the boy “ was free of
disturbances,” which returned with his return
home. He barked like a dog, clucked like a hen,
talked nonsense about “ Powel,” who pinched
and bullied him. While he was in bed with
the old people, “a pot with its contents was
thrown upon them.” They were clutched by
hands, like Mr. and Mrs. C. Once a voice was
heard singing, “Revenge, revenge is sweet.”
Finally a mate of a ship came, declared that the
grandmother was not rightly suspected as a
witch, and offered, if he were left alone with
the boy, to cure him. “The mate came next
day betimes, and the boy was with him till
night; since which time his house, Morse saith,
has not been molested with evil spirits.” Pro¬
bably the mate used a rope’s end: the boy was
more speedily cured than Mr. H.

The phenomena are those of droll or buffoon¬
ing wights, as Mr. Kirk says, and no man can
doubt that the boy was at the bottom of the
whole affair. But whether he was capable, when
well and conscious, of such diversions, is another
question. Children like him produced the famous
witch-mania in New England.

We have here, undeniably, a well-recorded

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INTRODUCTION .

case, analogous to that of Mr. H. In a modem
case of bell-ringing, heavy thumps, and move¬
ment of objects, the agent was “a young girl
who had never been out to service before,”
and who passed the night in a state of wildly
agitated somnambulism, repeating the whole of
the Service for the day. 1 Mather gives several
other examples, in which motives for trickery
are manifest, while we hear nothing of ah epi¬
leptic or hysterical patient

In the majority of instances, ancient or modem,
children are the agents. Thus we have “ Physi¬
cal Phenomena obtained in a Family Circle,”
that of Mr. and Mrs. Davis, with their children,
at Rio Janeiro. 2 The time was 1888. Curiosity
had been caused by “the notorious Henry Slade.”
There were “ touches and grasps of hands.” A
table “ ran after me ” (Professor Alexander) “ and
attempted to hem me in,” when only C., a little
girl, was in the room. “ As far as I could see,
she did not even touch the table.” The chair
of Amy (aged thirteen months) was moved about,
like that of Master Morse two hundred years
earlier. A table jumped into the laps of the

1 Proc. S. P % R xix. 160-173.

* Op. tit., pp. 173-189.

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xlvii

public. There were raps and thumps, which
“seemed to shake the whole building.” Lights
floated about. A slate, covered with flour, was
placed on C.’s lap; her hands lay on the table.
Marks of fingers came on the flour, and, in
answer to request, the mark of “ a naked baby
foot.” The children present were wearing laced
boots, and we are not told that little Amy was
under the table. Bluish lights and the phantasm
of a dog were seen.

All this answers to an ancient example—the
disturbances in Mr. Wesley’s house at Epworth,
December 1715 to January 1716. 1 The house
was a new one, rebuilt in 1709. We have Mr.
Samuel Wesley’s Journal, with many contem¬
porary letters from members of the family, and
later reminiscences. There were many lively
girls in the house, and two servants—a maid
and a man, recently engaged. The disturbances
began with groanings; then came knockings,
which flitted about the house. Mr. Wesley
heard nothing till December 21. The knocks
replied to those made by the family, but they
never could imitate the sounds. Mrs. Wesley

1 Memoirs of the Wesley Family , by Adam Clarke,
LL.D., F.A.S. London, 1823, pp. 161-200.

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INTRODUCTION .

and Emily saw an object “ like a badger ” run
from under a bed and vanish. The mastiff was
much alarmed by the sounds. Mr. Wesley was
“ thrice pushed by invisible power.” The bogie
was a Jacobite, as was Mrs. Wesley: Mr. Wesley
was for King George. The knocks were violent
when that usurper was prayed for. They did
not try praying for King James. Robin, the ser¬
vant, saw a hand-mill work violently. “ Naught
vexed me but that it was empty. I thought,
had it but been full of malt, he might have
ground his heart out for me.” But this was a
jocose, not an industrious deviL Robin called
it “old Jeffries,” after a gentleman lately dead;
the family called it “Jeffrey,” unless one name
is a mere misspelling. It “seemed to sweep
after” Nancy Wesley, when she swept the
chambers. “ She thought he might have done
it for her, and saved her the trouble.” Mrs.
Wesley concealed the matter from her husband,
“lest he should fancy it was against his own
death” (Letter of January 12, 1716-17). This
belief in noises foretelling death is very common;
compare Scott’s nocturnal disturbances at Abbots¬
ford when Bullock, his agent in building it, was
dying in London. The racket occurred on April

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INTRODUCTION.

xlix

28 and 29, 1818, and Scott examined the scene
“with Beardie’s broadsword under my arm.” 1
Bullock died in Tenterden Street, in London,
whether on April 28 or 29 is not easily to be
ascertained. “ The noise resembled half a dozen
men putting up boards and furniture, and nothing
can be more certain than that there was nobody
on the premises at the time.” 2 The noises used
to follow Hetty Wesley, and thump under her
feet, as under those of C. in Professor Alex¬
ander’s narrative. Mr. Wesley’s plate “danced
before him on the table a pretty while, without
anybody’s stirring the table.” 3 The disturbances
quieted down in January, but recurred on March
31. Similar phenomena had occurred “long
before ” in the family. 4 “ The sound very often
seemed in the air, in the middle of a room,
nor could they ever make any such themselves
by any contrivance.” 5 On February 16, 1740,
twenty-three years later, Emily writes to Jack
about “ that wonderful thing called by us Jeffrey.

1 Letter to Terry, April 3a Lockhart, v. 309.

2 Scott to Terry, May 16.

8 Susannah Wesley to Samuel Wesley, March 27,
1717.

4 Op. ciL , p. 193.

8 Op. cit., p. 194.

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INTRODUCTION .

. . . That something calls on me against any
extraordinary new affliction.”

Priestley styles this affair “ the best-authenti¬
cated that is anywhere extant.” He supposes it
to have been “ a trick of the servants, for mere
amusement.” The modus operandi is difficult to
explain. We hear nothing of bad health or
hysterics in the household. 1 For our purpose it
is enough that a few incidents of this kind, how¬
ever produced, might originate and keep alive
the belief in Brownies, and

“ That shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow,"

who

“ Frights the maidens of the villagery,

Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern.”

By a curious coincidence, we can show a case
in which phenomena of the kind usually reported
as occurring at seances , and in examples like that
of William Morse, were actually accepted as
manifestations of the Sleagh Maith , or Fairies.
In his account of the disturbances in the Wesley
family, Dr. Clarke, the author, averred that he
had himself witnessed similar events. It thus
became necessary to consult his Life (London,
1 Note (d), p. 83.

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INTRODUCTION . li

i 833). “In the history of my own life,” says
Dr. Clarke, “ I have related this matter in suffi¬
cient detail.” 1 Unluckily, in his Life (pp. 76,
77) he gives scarce any details. Previous to
sudden deaths in a family called Church, the
phenomena of falling plates, heavy tread, and
other noises occurred. Mr. Clarke “ sat up one
whole night in the kitchen, and most distinctly
heard the above noises.” He was a bom mystic,
and even in childhood a reader of Cornelius
Agrippa, and, later, of the alchemists. But he
records the instance of a woman, who solemnly
declared to Mrs. Clarke that a number of the
gentle people (Sleagh Maith) “occasionally fre¬
quented her house; that they often conversed
with her, one of them putting its hands on her
eyes during the time, which hands she repre¬
sented, from the sensation she had, to be about
the size of those of a child of four or five years
of age.” The family were “ worn down ” with
these visits, and from the mention of touches of
hands it is pretty plain that we have to do with
the kind of sprite who paws people at seances.
But these sprites are recognised (the scene is the
North of Ireland) as “gentle people,” Folk of

1 Memoirs of the Wesley Family, p. 198.

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INTRODUCTION.

Peace. The amusing thing is, that Mr. Clarke,
while he believes in Mr. Wesley’s Jeffrey, and
in the supernatural origin of a noise in a kitchen,
laughs at similar phenomena when assigned to
Fairies. It is a mere difference of terminology.

Another old example may be given. It is
Alexander Telfair’s “ True Relation ” of disturb¬
ances at Ringcroft, in the parish of Herrick. 1
The story is attested by the signatures of Ewart,
minister of Kells, in Galloway; Monteith, mini¬
ster of Borg; Murdoch, minister of Crosmichael,
on Loch Ken; Spalding, minister at Parton,
also by Loch Ken; Falconer, minister at Kel-
town; Mr. M‘Lellan of Colline, Lennox of Mil-
house, and a number of farmers. These were
nil neighbours, and all attested what they saw
and heard. Robert Chambers says, “There
never, perhaps, was any mystic history better
attested. Few narrations of the kind have in¬
cluded occurrences and appearances which it was
more difficult to reconcile with the theory of trick
or imposture.” Mr. Telfair himself had been

1 Edinburgh; Mossman, 1696. There is a London
reprint, of which I have a copy The pamphlet is repub¬
lished in Mr. Stevenson’s edition of Sinclair’s Satan's
Invisible World Discovered , 1685-1871, Appendix, p.
xix.

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INTRODUCTION. liii

chaplain, in 1687, to Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick
of Closebum. He was then an Episcopalian,

Andrew Mackie was a stone-mason at Herrick.
On March 7 (1695?), and for long after, stones
began to fly about in his house by night and
day. “The stones which hit any person had
not half their natural weight.” Mackie com¬
plained to Telfair, his minister, who entered the
house and prayed: nothing odd occurred. As
he stood outside, he “ saw two little stones drop
down on the croft;” then he was asked to return,
and was pelted inside the cottage. This was
March 11. For a week there was no more
trouble, then the disturbances began again. Mr.
Telfair was sent for, and was pelted, beaten with
a staff, and heard loud knockings. “ That night*
as I was at prayer, leaning on a bedside, I felt
something lifting up my arm. I, casting my
eyes thither, perceived a little white hand and
arm from the elbow down, but presently it
evanished.” “There was never anything seen
except that hand I saw,” and an apparition of
a boy in grey clothes. Sometimes the stoning
went on in the open air. 1 There were plenty

1 Compare similar phenomena in Obeahy and in Peru¬
vian example, note (0), p. 82.

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INTRODUCTION .

of touchings, grippings, and seratchings. “The
door-bar ” (a long, heavy piece of squared wood)
“ would go thorow the house as if a person were
carrying it in their hand, yet nothing seen doing
it.” Here we compare, in Proc. S. P. P., Feb¬
ruary 1892, the story of a carpenter’s shop at
Swanland, in Yorkshire, where pieces of wood
were “levitated” into abnormal flight. No im¬
posture was discovered, nor was the presence of
any one person necessary.

The ministers of Kells and Crosmichael were
pelted with stones of eight pounds weight. On
April 6, fire-balls floated through the cottage.
When five ministers were present, “ it made all
the house shake, brake a hole through the
thatch, and poured in great stones.” “ It handled
the legs of some as with adman’s hand;” it
hoisted Mr. Telfair, Lennox of Millhouse, and
others off the ground! A sieve flew through
the house; Mackie caught it; a force gripped
it, and pulled the interior part out of the rim.
A day of humiliation was solemnly kept in the
parish, which only excited the emulation of the
disturbing agent; “ it continued in a most fear¬
ful manner without intermission.” Voices were
heard, which talked nonsense of a semi-scriptural

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INTRODUCTION . lv

kind; finally the thing died out early in May.
By the way, on April 28, “it pulled down the
end of the house, all the stone-work thereof.”

This is a very odd case, as no suspicion is
thrown on the children. The attestations of
several witnesses are given, not only at the close,
hut for almost every separate incident. The
vision of the white hand is agreeable.

The Devil of Glen Luce, in Galloway, was
published by Sinclair in his Hydrostatieks, of all
places, in 1672, and again in Satan's Invisible
World , and by Glanvil in SaddiLcismus Trium-
phatu 8 . In this affair a boy called Thomas, a
son of the unlucky householder, was clearly the
agent. The phenomena were stone-throwing,
beating with sticks, levitation of a plate, and a
great deal of voices, probably uttered by the
aforesaid Thomas. The Synod ordered a day of
humiliation (1655-56).

The affair of the Drummer of Tedworth (1661)
is, or ought to be, too well known for quotation.
The troubles began after Mr. Mompesson seized
the drum of a vagrant musician. In the pre¬
sence of a clergyman, chairs walked about the
room of themselves, “ a bed-staff was thrown at
the minister, but so favourably that a lock of

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INTRODUCTION.

wool could not have fallen more softly.” The
children, as usual, were especially haunted. A
jingling of money was common, as it also was at
Epworth. Lights wandered about the house,
“ blue and glimmering.” The noise was persis¬
tent in the woodwork of the children’s beds,
while their hands were outside. The knocks
answered knocks made by visitors. There were
divers other marvels. The Drummer was sus¬
pected, but, consciously or not, the children
were probably the agents. They seem to have
been in their usual health. 1 In Galashiels (date
not given), loud knocks on the floor accompanied
a hystero-epileptic girl wherever she sat. In
bed, “her body was so lifted up that many
strong men were not able to keep it down.”
The minister, who could make nothing of her,
was Mr. Wilkie ; the girl was Margaret Wilson
(Sinclair, p. 200).

This little parcel of strange stories may suffice
to show that part of the Fairy belief is based on
such incidents as still occur, or are reported to
occur, just in the old fashion. It is for psycho¬
logists and physicians to ascertain how far, if at

1 Glanvil's version is given in Sinclair's Satan** In¬
visible Woild.

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INTRODUCTION. lvii

all, the incidents are produced by hysterical, or
epileptic, or somnambulistic patients. Common
forthright trickery is usually detected in paid
mediums. But the trickery simulates real
events, or continues an old traditional form of
imposture. The moral that parents should not
allow their children to be present at stances
hardly needs enforcing. Some of them may
escape unharmed, but frightful injuries may be
inflicted on health and on character. 1

VI. Second Sight and “ Telepathy.”

We have already hinted that events of an
ordinary kind—illusions, cases of mistaken iden¬
tity, or hallucination—are probably the ground¬
work in part of the Highland belief in second
sight. Of course, if a certain proportion of
hallucinations were or could be taken for “ veri¬
dical,” attention would be given to these alone :
the others would be neglected. The Psychical
Society has collected and examined hundreds of
these cases in modem life.

The Society may find out, experimentally,
whether second sight can be acquired in the
manner described by Mr. Kirk—whether by
1 Note («), p. 85.

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INTRODUCTION.

the hair tether, or by merely putting the foot
under that of a seer. Thus contact is used
in thought reading, as, in second sight, the
seer by contact communicates his hallucination.
Second sight itself is now called telepathy,
which, however, does not essentially advance
our knowledge of the subject. It is either very
common, or people who choose to claim the
possession of it are very common. In our
society it is mere matter for idle tales; in
the Highlands the second sight was a belief
and a system. Mr. Pepys and Dr. Johnson
investigated the matter, and Dr. Johnson came
away open to conviction, but unconvinced. The
Psychical Society is now examining second
sight in the Highlands. It is interesting to
learn that the Presbyterian seers justified their
visions out of the Bible, which also justified
the burning of these gifted men on occasion.
Mr. Kirk is tolerant enough to ascribe their
visions to a “bounty of Providence.” This
may have passed, north of the Highland
line, but in Fife and the south the seers would
speedily have been accommodated with a stake
and tar-barrel. The writings of Wodrow and
Mr. Robert Blair of St. Andrews (1650-60)

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INTRODUCTION. lix

prove that if a savoury preacher wrought mar¬
vels, he was inspired, hut if an amateur did
the very same things, — prophesied, healed
diseases, and so forth,—he, or she, was likely
to be haled before the Presbytery, and possibly
dragged to the stake. In the Highlands these
invidious distinctions were less forcibly drawn.
Mr. Kirk treats the whole question in his
curiously cold scientific way. If these things
occur, they are in the realm of Nature, and are
results of causes which may be variously con¬
jectured. They may be providential, or a sport
of evolution, derived from “ a complexionall
Quality of the first acquirer,” which often
becomes hereditary in his lineage.

Lord Tarbott’s letter to an inquirer, Robert
Boyle, is added by Mr. Kirk to his little
treatise, with his own annotations. His belief
that the Fairy sights could only be seen while
the eyes are kept steady without twinkling, is
attested by a well-known anecdote. On the
afternoon of Culloden, a little girl, staying
with Lord Lovat at Gortuleg, was reading in
a window-seat. Chancing to look out, she saw
a company of headlong riders hastening to the
castle. Believing them to be the Sleagh Maith ,

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INTRODUCTION .

she tried hard to keep her eyes from twinkling,
that she might not lose the vision. But these,
alas! were no Fairies, they were Prince Charles
and his men flying from the victorious English.
The tale proves that the belief long survived
the day of the minister of Aberfoyle. Lord
Tarbott mentions, also, the vision of the shroud
on the breast of a man about to die, which
seems to be alluded to in the prophecy of
Theoclymenus in the Odyssey . Lord Tarbott’s
tales are of the familiar kind, there are dozens
of such in Theojphilus Insvlanus. Mr. Kirk’s
notes are chiefly remarkable for his citation of
Walter Grahame’s “evil eye,” which killed
what he praised,—a world-wide superstition, too
common to need supporting by foreign and
classical examples.

Unluckily, at this point Mr. Kirk abandons
what we may call his scientific attitude. He
has accounted for his “supernatural” affairs
as not supernatural at all, but phenomena in
Nature, and subject, like other phenomena, to
laws. But now it occurs to him to explain the
conduct of his Sleagh Maith as the result of
missionary zeal on their part: “ they endeavour
to convince us of a Deity; ” though, on the face

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INTRODUCTION.

lxi

of his argument, a Co-walker no more proves a
Deity than does an ordinary " walker.” He may
have been reading “ the learned Dr. Mor ” (More
the Platonist), and may have altered his ideas.
His account of a girl who learned, or rather
composed, a long poem by aid of " our nimble
and courteous spirits,” affords an early example
of what is called “ an inspirational medium.”
It is unlucky that Mr. Kirk did not publish
this work, of which he had a copy. The ordi¬
nary “ spiritual ” poetry may be written, as Dr.
Johnson said of Osrian, “ by any one who would
abandon his mind to it.” When Mr. Kirk
maintains that Neolithic arrow-heads could not
have been executed “ by all the Airt of man,”
he relapses from his usual odd common-sense.
He also believes in men who are magically shot-
proof, like Claverhouse, who had to be shot by a
silver bullet; like Archbishop Sharp, on whom
his pious assassins erroneously held that their
bullets took no effect; and like certain soldiers
mentioned by Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket
This absurd belief was very generally held by
the Covenanters. Where his local superstitions
and those of his generation are not concerned,
Mr. Kirk recovers his clearness of intellect. In

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INTRODUCTION .

Purgatory he finds only the pre-Christian Hades,
“our Secret Republick,” with an ecclesiastical
colouring—“additional Fictions of Monks’ doting
and crazied Heads.” Mr. Kirk did not perceive
the danger involved in his own argument. If
a Highland second-sighted man answers to a
Hebrew prophet in his visions and trances, a
Hebrew prophet is in danger of being no more
considered than a Highland second-sighted man.
However, it is to Mr. Kirk’s praise that he shows
no persecuting disposition as far as witches are
concerned (though he has seen them pricked),
and that he argues very fairly from his premisses,
and within his limits. 1 He recognises the unity
of spiritual phenomena and of popular beliefs,
whether it springs from a common well-head of
delusion in our nature, or whether it really has
a source in the observation of peculiar and rather
rare phenomena.

To the Edinburgh edition of 1815 (probably
the only one) the editor added the work of
Theophilus Insulanus on Second Sight. This is
not rare nor expensive, and we do not reproduce
it. One case of “telepathy” may be quoted
from Theophilus.

1 Note (/), p. 86.

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INTRODUCTION.

lxiii

“Donald Beaton, residenter in Hammir, re¬
lated that, in his passage from Glasgow to the
Isle of Sky, he stopped at Tippermory, a known
harbour in the Isle of Mull.” Here some one
gave him a loin of venison. Donald, whose
wife’s mother was a seer, to try her powers,
wished that piece of venison in her hands.
“ The same night the seer, who lived with her
daughter, his wife, apprehended she saw him
enter the house with a shapeless lump in his
hands—she knew not what, but it resembled
flesh, which gave herself and her daughter great
joy, as they had despaired of him by his long
absence.” This is “telepathy,” if telepathy
there be.

Another picturesque tale shows how, on the
night before the Rout of Moy, Patrick M‘Caskill
met the famed M'Rimmon (sic), M‘Leod’s piper,
in the town of Inverness, and saw him contract
into the size of a boy of five or six, and expand
again into his athletic proportions. M‘Rimmon
was killed in the Rout of Moy—an attempt to
surprise and seize Prince Charles. Before leaving
Skye he had prophesied—

“M*Leod shall come back,

But M‘Rimmon shall never.”

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INTRODUCTION .

The editor is acquainted with a splendid case
of second sight in Kensington. The seer was
an accomplished English gentleman, and men¬
tioned his vision at the moment to a witness
who remembers and corroborates the statement.
Thus the Hebrides and Highlands have no
monopoly of second sight.

The researches of M. Charcot, M. Richet, and
other psychologists do not at present help us
much in the matter of veridical second sight.
It is not a hallucination “ suggested ” to a hyp¬
notised subject, but an impression produced by
a remote person or event on a subject who has
not been hypnotised at alL For example, Dr.
Adam Clarke, in his Life (voL ii. p. 16) tells us
of Mr. Tracy Clarke, who, being in the Isle of
Man with his son, dreamed that he had visited
his wife in Liverpool He told his son that
Mrs. Clarke was looking very well, but, contrary
to her habit, was sleeping in the best bedroom.
On the day when Mr. Clarke said this, Mrs.
Clarke, who had been sleeping in her best bed¬
room, told the little son who lay in her room
that she had heard his father ride up to the
house, stable his horse, open the door, come
upstairs, and walk round her bed, but that she

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INTRODUCTION.

Ixv

could not see him. This is a case at least of
second hearing, and has no hypnotic expla¬
nation.

We end in the candid spirit of Dr. Johnson,
as far as the Polter-Geist and second sight are
concerned—willing to be convinced, but far in¬
deed from conviction. As to the Fairy belief, we
conceive it to be a complex matter, from which
tradition, with its memory of earth-dwellers, is
not wholly absent, while more is due to a survi¬
val of the pre-Christian Hades, and to the belief
in local spirits—the Yuis of Melanesia, the
Nereids of ancient and modem Greece, the Lares
of Rome, the fateful Moerse and Hathors—old
imaginings of a world not yet “ dispeopled of its
dreams.” 1

1 The “earth-houses ” in Scotland and the isles, which
seem to have been inhabited at an early period, can sel¬
dom be called hills or mounds; being built for purposes
of concealment, they are usually almost on a level with
the surrounding land. The Fairy hills, on the other hand,
are higher and much more notable, and were probably
sepulchral. This, at least, is the impression left on
me by Mr. MacRitchie’s book, The Underground Life.
(Privately printed. Edinburgh, 1892.)

6

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AN ESSAY

OF

The Nature and A&ions of the Subterranean (and,
for the moft Part,) Invifible People, heretofioir
going under the name of Elves, Faunes,
and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low-
Country Scots, as they are defcribed by thofe
who have the Second Sight ; and now, to
occafion further Inquiry, collected and com¬
pared, by a Circumfpedl Inquirer refiding
among the Scottifti-Irifh in Scotland.

A

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feecret CommoutoealtiK

OR,

A Treatife difplayeing the Chiefe Curiofities
as they are in Ufe among diverfe of the
People of Scotland to this Day;
Singularities for the
mod Part peculiar to
that Nation.

A Subject not heretofore difcourfed of by any of our
Writters ; and yet ventured on in an Effay
to fupprefs the impudent and growing
Atheifme of this Age, and to
fatiffie the defire of fome
choice Freinds.

Then a Spirit puffed before my Face , the Hair of my
Flefh flood up ; it flood flill, but I could not difceme
the Forme thereof; ane Image was before mine Eyes.
—Job, 4. 15, 16.

This is a Rebellious People, which fay to the Siers, fie
not; and to the Prophets, prophefee not unto us right
Things , bot fpeak unto us fmoothe Things .—Ifaiah,
30. 9> IO.

And the Man whofe Eyes were open hath fiaid. —Num¬
bers, 24. 15.

For now we fie thorough a Glafs darkly, but then Face to
Face .—1 Corinth. 13. 12.

It doth not yet appear what we fhall be ; but we Jhall be
tyke God , andfie him as he is .—1 John, 3. 2.

Mi; ytyarret fuuu> 5 r)<rorTCu inroKarubev vbaros kcu twk
yeirovwv avrov ;—Job, 26. 5 (Septuag.).

By Mr Robert Kirk, MiniRer at AberfoilL
1691.

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CHAPTER I.

OF THE SUBTERRANEAN INHABITANTS.

ESE Siths , or Fairies, they call
Sleagh Maith, or the Good
People, it would feem, to prevent
the Dint of their ill Attempts,
(for the Irifh ufe to blefs all they fear Harme
of;) and are faid to be of a midle Nature
betuixt Man and Angel, as were Daemons
thought to be of old; of intelligent ftudious
Spirits, and light changable Bodies, (lyke thofe
called Aflral,) fomewhat of the Nature of a con-
denfed Cloud, and bell feen in Twilight. Thes
Bodies be fo plyable thorough the Subtilty of the
Spirits that agitate them, that they can make
them appear or difoppear att Pleafure. Some
have Bodies or Vehicles fo fpungious, thin, and
defecat, that they are fed by only fucking into
fome fine fpirituous Liquors, that peirce lyke

pure

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6

SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

pure Air and Oyl: others feid more grofe on
the Foyfon or fubflance of Corns and Liquors,
or Come it felfe that grows on the Surface of
the Earth, which thefe Fairies fleall away, partly
invifible, partly preying on the Grain, as do
Crowes and Mice; wherefore in this lame Age,
they are fome times heard to bake Bread, llrike
Hammers, and do fuch lyke Services within the
little Hillocks they moll haunt: fome whereof
of old, before the Gofpell difpelled Paganifm,
and in fome barbarous Places as yet, enter
Houfes after all are at reft, and fet the Kitchens
in order, cleanfing all the Veffels. Such Drags
goe under the name of Brownies. When we
have plenty, they have Scarcity at their Homes;
and on the contrarie (for they are empowred to
catch as much Prey everywhere as they pleafe,)
there Robberies notwithllanding oft tymes oc-
cafiion great Rickes of Come not to bleed fo
weill, (as they call it,) or prove fo copious by
verie farr as wes expected by the Owner.

There Bodies of congealled Air are fome
tymes caried aloft, other whiles grovell in diffe¬
rent Schapes, and enter into any Cranie or Clift

of

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

7

of the Earth where Air enters, to their ordinary
Dwellings; the Earth being full of Cavities and
Cells, and there being no Place nor Creature
but is fuppofed to have other Animals (greater
or letter) living in or upon it as Inhabitants;
and no fuch thing as a pure Wildernefs in the
whole Univerfe.

2. We then (the more terreflriall kind have
now fo numeroufly planted all Countreys,) do
labour for that abflrufe People, as weill as for
ourfelves. Albeit, when feverall Countreys were
unhabitated by ws, thefe had their eafy Tillage
» above Ground, as we now. The Print of thofe
Furrous do yet remaine to be feen on the Shoul¬
ders of very high Hills, which was done when
the champayn Ground was Wood and Forreil.

They remove to other Lodgings at the Begin¬
ning of each Quarter of the Year, fo traveling
• till Doomfday, being imputent and [impotent
of?] flaying in one Place, and finding fome Eafe
by fo puming [Journeying] and changing Habi¬
tations. Their chamselion-lyke Bodies fwim in
the Air near the Earth with Bag and Bagadge;
and at fuch revolution of Time, Seers, or Men

of

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

of the Second Sight, (Faemales being feldome
fo qualified) have very terrifying Encounters
with them, even on High Ways; who therefoir
ufwally fhune to travell abroad at thefe four
Seafons of the Year, and thereby have made it
a Cuftome to this Day among the Scottifh-Irifh
to keep Church duely evry firfl Sunday of the
Quarter to fene or hallow themfelves, their
Corns and Cattell, from the Shots and Stealth
of thefe wandring Tribes; and many of thefe
fuperflitious People will not be feen in Church
againe till the nixt Quarter begin, as if no Duty
were to be learned or done by them, but all the
Ufe of Worfhip and Sermons were to fave them
from thefe Arrows that fly in the Dark. 1

They are diflributed in Tribes and Orders,
and have Children, Nurfes, Mariages, Deaths,
and Burialls, in appearance, even as we, (unlefs
they fo do for a Mock-fhow, or to prognoflicate
fome fuch Things among us.)

3. They are clearly feen by thefe Men of the
Second Sight to eat at Funeralls [and] Ban¬
quets ; hence many of the Scottifh-Irifh will not

teafl

1 Note ( a ), p. 86.

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

9

teaft Meat at thefe Meittings, left they have
Communion with, or be poyfoned by, them.
So are they feen to carrie the Beer or Coffin
with the Corps among the midle-earth Men to
the Grave. Some Men of that exalted Sight
(whither by Art or Nature) have told me they
have feen at thefe Meittings a Doubleman, or
the Shape of fome Man in two places; that is,
a fuperterranean and a fubterranean Inhabitant,
perfectly refembling one another in all Points,
whom he notwithftanding could eafily diftinguifh
one from another, by fome fecret Tockens and
Operations, and fo go fpeak to the Man his
Neighbour and Familiar, palling by the Appari¬
tion or Refemblance of him. They avouch that
every Element and different State of Being have
Animals refembling thefe of another Element;
as there be Fifties fometimes at Sea refembling
Monks of late Order in all their Hoods and
Dreffes; fo as the Roman invention of good and
bad Daemons, and guardian Angells particularly
affigned, is called by them an ignorant Miftake,
fprung only from this Originall. They call this
Reflex-man a Co-walker, every way like the

Man,

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Man, as a Twin-brother and Companion, haunt¬
ing him as his lhadow, as is oft feen and known
among Men (refembling the Originall,) both
before and after the Originall is dead; and wes
alfo often feen of old to enter a Hous, by which
the People knew that the Perfon of that Liknes
wes to Vifite them within a few days. This
Copy, Echo, or living Picture, goes att laft to his
own Herd. It accompanied that Perfon fo long
and frequently for Ends bell known to it felfe,
whither to guard him from the fecret Alfaults of
fome of its own Folks, or only as ane fportfull
Ape to counterfeit all his Actions. However,
the Stories of old Witches prove beyond con¬
tradiction, that all Sorts of People, Spirits which
affume light aery Bodies, or crazed Bodies co¬
acted by forrein Spirits, feem to have fome
Pleafure, (at leall to affwage from Pain or
Melancholy,) by frilking and capering like
Satyrs, or whiltling and fcreeching (like un-
lukie Birds) in their unhallowed Synagogues
and Sabboths. If invited and earnellly re¬
quired, thefe Companions make themfelves
knowne and familiar to Men; other wife, being

in

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ii

in a different State and Element, they nather
can nor will eafily converfe with them. They
avouch that a Heluo, or Great-eater, hath a
voracious Elve to be his attender, called a
Joint-eater or Juft-halver, feeding on the Pith
or Quinteffence of what the Man eats; and that
therefoir he continues Lean like a Hawke or
Heron, notwith Handing his devouring Appe¬
tite: yet it would feem that they convey that
fubftance elfewhere, for thefe Subterraneans eat
but little in their Dwellings; there Food being
exactly clean, and ferved up by Pleafant Chil¬
dren, lyke inchanted Puppets. What Food they
extra# from us is conveyed to their Homes by
fecret Paths, as fume fkilfull Women do the Pith
and Milk from their Neighbours Cows into their
own Chiefe-hold thorow a Hair-tedder, at a great
Diftance, by Airt Magic, or by drawing a fpickot
fattened to a Poll, which will bring milk as farr
of as a Bull will be heard to roar. 1 The Chiefe
made of the remaineing Milk of a Cow thus
flrain’d will fwim in Water like a Cork. The
Method they take to recover their Milk is a

bitter

1 Note (< b) t p. 87.

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

bitter chyding of the fufpedted Inchanters,
charging them by a counter Charme to give
them back their own, in God, or their Mailer’s
Name. But a little of the Mother’s Dung
llroakit on the Calves Mouth before it fuck
any, does prevent this theft.

4. Their Houfes are called large and fair,
and (unlefs att fome odd occafions) unperceave-
able by vulgar eyes, like Rachland, and other
inchanted Illands, having fir Lights, continual
Lamps, and Fires, often feen without Fuel to
fuflain them. Women are yet alive who tell
they were taken away when in Child-bed to
nurfe Fairie Children, a lingering voracious
Image of their (them?) being left in their place,
(like their Reflexion in a Mirrour,) which (as if
it were fome infatiable Spirit in ane affumed
Bodie) made firfl femblance to devour the
Meats that it cunningly carried by, and then
left the Carcafe as if it expired and departed
thence by a naturall and common Death. The
Child, and Fire, with Food and other Necef-
faries, are fet before the Nurfe how foon fhe
enters; but fhe nather perceaves any Pafiage

out

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out, nor fees what thofe People doe in other
Rooms of the Lodging. When the Child is
wained, the Nurfe dies, or is conveyed back,
or gets it to her choice to flay there. But if
any Superterraneans be fo fubtile, as to practice
Slights for procuring a Privacy to any of their
Mifteries, (fuch as making ufe of their Oynt-
ments, which as Gygefs Ring makes them in-
vifible, or nimble, or cads them in a Trance,
or alters their Shape, or makes Things appear
at a vail Diftance, &c.) they fmite them without
Paine, as with a Puff of Wind, and bereave them
of both the naturall and acquired Sights in the
twinkling of ane Eye, (both thefe Sights, where
once they come, being in the fame Organ and
infeparable,) or they flrick them Dumb. The
Tramontains to this Day put Bread, the Bible,
or a piece of Iron, in Womens Beds when
travelling, to fave them from being thus flollen;
and they commonly report, that all uncouth, un¬
known Wights are terrifyed by nothing earthly
fo much as by cold Iron. They delyver the
Reafon to be that Hell lying betwixt the chill
Tempefts, and the Fire Brands of fcalding

Metals

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

Metals, and Iron of the North, (hence the
Loadflone caufes a tendency to that Point,)
by ane Antipathy thereto, thefe odious far-
fcenting Creatures lhrug and fright at all that
comes thence relating to fo abhorred a Place,
whence their Torment is eather begun, or
feared to come hereafter

5. Their Apparell and Speech is like that
of the People and Countrey under which they
live : fo are they feen to wear Plaids and varie¬
gated Garments in the Highlands of Scotland,
and Suanochs therefore in Ireland. They fpeak
but litle, and that by way of whiffling, clear,
not rough. The verie Divels conjured in any
Countrey, do anfwer in the Language of the
Place; yet fometimes the Subterraneans fpeak
more diflin6Uy than at other times. Ther
Women are (aid to Spine very fine, to Dy,
to Toffue, and Embroyder: but whither it is
as manuall Operation of fubflantiall refined
Stuffs, with apt and folid Inflruments, or only
curious Cob-webs, impalpable Rainbows, and
a fantaflic Imitation of the A< 5 tions of more
terreflricall Mortalls, fince it tranfcended all

the

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the Senfes of the Seere to difceme whither, I
leave to conjedture as I found it

6. There Men travell much abroad, either
prefeging or aping the difmall and tragicall
Actions of fome amongd us; and have alfo many
difaflorous Doings of their own, as Convoca¬
tions, Fighting, Gafhes, Wounds, and Burialis,
both in the Earth and Air. They live much
longer than wee; yet die at lad, or [at] lead
vanifli from that State. ’Tis ane of their Tenets,
that nothing perifheth, but (as the Sun and
Year) every Thing goes in a Circle, leffer or
greater, and is renewed and refrefhed in its
Revolutions; as ’tis another, that every Bodie
in the Creation moves, (which is a fort of Life;)
and that nothing moves, but [h]as another
Animal moving on it; and fo on, to the utmod
minuted Corpufcle that’s capable to be a Re¬
ceptacle of Life.

7. They are laid to have aridocraticall Rulers
and Laws, but no difcemible Religion, Love,
or Devotion towards God, the bleffed Maker
of all: they difappear whenever they hear his
Name invocked, or the Name of Jesus, (at

which

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16 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

which all do bow willinglie, or by conftraint,
that dwell above or beneath within the Earth,
Philip. 2. io;) nor can they adl ought at that
Time after hearing of that fecred Name. The
Tabhaisver, or Seer, that correfponds with
this kind of Familiars, can bring them with a
Spel to appear to himfelfe or others when he
pleafes, as readily as Endor Witch to thofe of
her Kind. He tells, they are ever readieft to
go on hurtfull Errands, but feldome will be the
Mefiengers of great Good to Men. He is not
terrified with their Sight when he calls them,
but feeing them in a furpryze (as often he does)
frights him extreamly. And glaid would he be
quite of fuch, for the hideous Spectacles feen
among them; as the torturing of fome Wight,
earneft ghoftly ftairing Looks, Skirmifties, and
the like. They do not all the Harme which
appearingly they have Power to do; nor are
they perceaved to be in great Pain, fave that
they are ufewally filent and fullen. They are
laid to have many pleafant toyilh Books; but
the operation of thefe Peices only appears in
fome Paroxifms of antic corybantic Jolity, as if

ravilht

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17

ravilht and prompted by a new Spirit entering
into them at that Inftant, lighter and mirrier
than their own. Other Books they have of
involved abflrufe Senfe, much like the Rofurcian
[Rofycrucian] Style. They have nothing of the
Bible, lave colledted Parcells for Charms and
counter Charms; not to defend themfelves
withall, but to operate on other Animals, for
they are a People invulnerable by our Weapons;
and albeit Were-wolves and Witches true Bodies
are (by the union of the Spirit of Nature that
runs thorow all, echoing and doubling the Blow
towards another) wounded at Home, when the
allrial affumed Bodies are Itricken elfewhere;
as the Strings of a Second Harp, tune to ane
unifon, Sounds, though only ane be llruck;
yet thefe People have not a fecond, or fo grofs
a Bodie at all, to be fo pierced; but as Air,
which when divyded units againe; or if they
feel Pain by a Blow, they are better Phyficians
than wee, and quickly cure it. They are not
fubjedl to fore Sickneffes, but dwindle and
decay at a certain Period, all about ane Age.
Some lay their continual Sadnels is becaufe of
b their

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18 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

their pendulous State, (like thofe Men, Luc. 13.
2. 6.) as uncertain what at the laft Revolution
will become of them, when they are lock’t up
into ane unchangeable Condition; and if they
have any frolic Fitts of Mirth, ’tis as the con-
flrained grinning of a Mort-head, or rather as
adted on a Stage, and moved by another, ther
[than?] cordially comeing of themfelves. But
other Men of the Second Sight, being illiterate,
and unwary in their Observations, learn from
thofe; one averring thofe Subterranean People
to be departed Souls, attending awhile in this
inferior State, and clothed with Bodies procured
throwgh their Almfdeeds in this Lyfe; fluid,
a6tive, aetheriall Vehicles to hold them, that
they may not M fcatter, or wander, and be loft in
the Totum, or their firft Nothing; but if any
were fo impious as to have given no Alms, they
fay when the Souls of fuch do depairt, they
deep in an unai6lve State till they refume the
terreftriall Bodies again: others, that what the
Low-countrey Scotts calls a Wreath, and the
Irish Taibhshe 1 or Death's Meflenger, (ap¬
pearing

1 The Death-candle is called Druig.

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19

pearing fometimes as a little rough Dog, and if
croffed and conjured in Time, will be pacified
by the Death of any other Creature inflead of
the fick Man,) is only exuvious Fumes of the
Man approaching Death, exhal'd and congeal’d
into a various Liknefs, 1 (as Ships and Armies are
fometimes fliapt in the Air,) and called allral
Bodies, agitated as Wild-fire with Wind, and are
neather Souls or counterfeiting Spirits; yet not
a few avouch (as is laid,) that furelie thefe are a
numerous People by them felves, having their
own Polities. Which Diverfities of Judgments
may occafion feverall Inconfonancies in this Re-
hearlall, after the narrowell Scrutiny made about it.

8. Their Weapons are moll what folid earthly
Bodies, nothing of Iron, but much of Stone,
like to yellow foft Flint Spa, lhaped like a
barbed Arrow-head, but flung like a Dairt, with
great Force. Thefe Armes (cut by Airt and
Tools it feems beyond humane) have fomething
of the Nature of Thunderbolt fubtilty, and mor¬
tally wounding the vital Parts without breaking
the Skin; of which Wounds I have obferved in

Bealls,

1 Note ( c ), p. 87.

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

Bealls, and felt them with my Hands. They
are not as infallible Benjamites, hitting at a
Hair’s-breadth; nor are they wholly unvanquilh-
able, at lealt in Appearance.

The Men of that Second Sight do not dif-
cover llrange Things when afked, but at Fits
and Raptures, as if infpyred with fome .Genius
at that Inltant, which before did lurk in or
about them. Thus I have frequently fpoke to
one of them, who in his Tranfport told he cut
the Bodie of one of thofe People in two with
his Iron Weapon, and fo efcaped this Onfet,
yet he faw nothing left behind of that appear¬
ing divyded; at other Times he out wrefted
[wreflled ?] fome of them. His Neibours often
perceaved this Man to difappear at a certane
Place, and about one Hour after to become
vifible, and difcover him felfe near a Bow-lhot
from the firfl Place. It was in that Place where
he became invifible, faid he, that the Subter¬
raneans did encounter and combate with him.
Thofe who are unfeened or unfan< 5 tified (called
Fey) are laid to be pierced or wounded with
thofe People’s Weapons, which makes them do

fomewhat

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fomewhat verie unlike their former Practice,
caufmg a sudden Alteration, yet the Caufe
thereof unperceavable at prefent; nor have
they Power (either they cannot make ufe of
their natural Powers, or afk’t not the heavenly
Aid,) to efcape the Blow impendent. A Man
of the Second Sight perceaved a Perfon stand¬
ing by him (found to others view) wholly gored
in Blood, and he (amazed-like) bid him inflantly
flee. The whole Man laught at his Airt and
Warning, fince there was no appearance of
Danger. He had fcarce contracted his Lips
from Laughter, when unexpectedly his Enemy
leapt in at his Side, and flab’d him with their
Weapons. They alfo pierce Cows or other
Animals, ufewally faid to be Elf-fhot, whofe
purefl Subfiance (if they die) thefe Subter¬
raneans take to live on, viz. the aereal and
setherial Parts, the mofl fpirituous Matter for
prolonging of Life, fuch as Aquavitae (moder¬
ately taken) is among Liquors, leaving the ter-
reflrial behind. The Cure of fuch Hurts is,
only for a Man to find out the Hole with his
Finger; as if the Spirits flowing from a Man's

warme

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22 SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

warme Hand were Antidote fufficient againft
their poyfon’d Dairts.

9. As Birds and Beads, whofe Bodies are
much ufed to the Change of the frie and open
Air, forfee Storms; fo thofe invifible People
are more iagacious to underfland by the Books
of Nature Things to come, than wee, who are
peftered with the groffer Dregs of all elementary
Mixtures, and have our purer Spirits choaked
by them. The Deer fcents out a Man and
Powder (tho a late Invention) at a great Dif-
tance; a hungry Hunter, Bread; and the Raven,
a Carrion : Ther Brains, being long clarified by
the high and fubtil Air, will obferve a very fmall
Change in a Trice. Thus a Man of the Second
Sight, perceaving the Operations of thefe fore-
cafling invifible People among us, (indulged
thorow a ftupendious Providence to give Warn¬
ings of fome remarkable Events, either in the
Air, Earth, or Waters,) told he faw a Winding-
fhroud creeping on a walking healthful Perfons
Legs till it come to the Knee; and afterwards
it came up to the Midle, then to the Shoulders,
and at laft over the Head, which was vifible to

no

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no other Perfdne. And by obferving the Spaces
of Time betwixt the feverall Stages, he eafily
gueffed how long the Man was to live who wore
the Shroud; for when it approached his Head,
he told that fuch a Perfon was ripe for the Grave.

10. There be many Places called Fairie-
hills, which the Mountain People think impious
and dangerous to peel or difcover, by taking
Earth or Wood from them; fuperflitioufly be-
leiving the Souls of their Prediceffors to dwell
there. 1 And for that End (fay they) a Mote or
Mount was dedicate befide every Church-yard,
to receive the Souls till their adjacent Bodies
arife, and fo become as a Fairie-hill; they ufe-
ing Bodies of Air when called Abroad. They
alfo affirme thofe Creatures that move invifibly
in a Houfe, and call hug great Stones, but do
no much Hurt, becaufe counter-wrought by
fome more courteous and charitable Spirits that
are everywhere ready to defend Men, (Dan. 10.
13.) to be Souls that have not attained their
Reft, thorough a vehement Defire of revealling
a Murther or notable Injurie done or receaved,

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or a Treafure that was forgot in their Liftyme
on Earth, which when difclofd to a Conjurer
alone, the Ghoft quite removes.

In the nixt Country to that of my former
Refidence, about the Year 1676, when there
was fome Scarcity of Graine, a marvelous Illapfe
and Vifion flrongly ftruck the Imagination of
two Women in one Night, living at a good
Diflance from one another, about a Treafure
hid in a Hill, called Sithbhruaich, or Fayrie-
hill The Appearance of a Treafure was firfl
reprefented to the Fancy, and then an audible
Voyce named the Place where it was to their
awaking Senfes. Whereupon both arofe, and
meitting accidentallie at the Place, difcovered
their Defigne; and joyntly digging, found a
Veffell as large as a Scottifh Peck, full of fmall
Pieces of good Money, of ancient Coyn; which
halving betuixt them, they fold in Difh-fulls for
Difh-fulls of Meall to the Countrey People.
Very many of undoubted Credit faw, and had
of the Coyn to this Day. But whither it was a
good or bad Angell, one of the fubterranean
People, or the refllefs Soul of him who hid it,

that

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that difcovered it, and to what End it was done,
I leave to the Examination of others.

11. These Subterraneans have Controverfies,
Doubts, Difputs, Feuds, and Siding of Parties;
there being fome Ignorance in all Creatures,
and the vaftefl created Intelligences not com-
pafling all Things. As to Vice and Sin, what¬
ever their own Laws be, fure, according to ours,
and Equity, natural, civil, and reveal’d, they
tranfgrefs and commit A6ts of Injuftice, and
Sin, by what is above faid, as to their ftealling
of Nurfes to their Children, and that other fort
of Plaginifm in catching our Children away,
(may feem to heir fome Eftate in thofe invifible
Dominions,) which never retume. For the
Inconvenience of their Succubi, who tryil with
Men, it is abominable; but for Swearing and
Intemperance, they are not obferved fo fubje6t
to thofe Irregularities, as to Envy, Spite, Hypo-
cracie, Lieing, and Diflimulation.

12. As our Religion oblidges us not to make
a peremptory and curious Search into thefe
Obftrufeneffes, fo that the Hiftories of all Ages
give as many plain Examples of extraordinary

Occurrances

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Occurrances as make a modefl Inquiry not con-
temptable. How much is written of Pigme’s,
Fairies, Nymphs, Syrens, Apparitions, which tho
not the tenth Part true, yet could not fpring
of nothing! Even Englifh Authors relate (of)
Barry Ifland, in Glamorganfhire, that laying
your Ear into a Clift of the Rocks, blowing
of Bellows, ftricking of Hammers, claihing of
Armour, fyling of Iron, will be heard diftindtly
ever fince Merlin inchaunted thofe fubterranean
Wights to a folid manuall forging of Arm’s to
Aurelius Ambrofius and his Brittans, till he
returned; which Merlin being killed in a Battell,
and not coming to loofe the Knot, thefe a6tive
Vulcans are there ty’d to a perpetuall Labour.
But to dip no deeper into this Well, I will nixt
give fome Account how the Seer my Informer
comes to have this fecret Way of Correfpondence
beyond other Mortalls.

There be odd Solemnities at invefling a
Man with the Priviledges of the whole Miflery
of this Second Sight He mufl run a Tedder
of Hair (which bound a Corps to the Bier) in a
Helix [?] about his Midle, from End to End;

then

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then bow his Head downwards, as did Elijah,
1 Kings, 18. 42. and look back thorough his
Legs untill he fie a Funerall advance till the
People crofs two Marches; or look thus back
thorough a Hole where was a Knot of Fir.
But if the Wind change Points while the Hair
Tedder is ty’d about him, he is in Peril of his
Lyfe. The ufewall Method for a curious Perfon
to get a tranfient Sight of this otherwife invifible
Crew of Subterraneans, (if impotently and over
rafhly fought,) is to put his [left Foot under the
Wizard’s right] Foot, and the Seer’s Hand is
put on the Inquirer’s Head, who is to look
over the Wizard’s right Shoulder, (which hes
ane ill Appearance, as if by this Ceremony ane
implicit Surrender were made of all betwixt
the Wizard’s Foot and his Hand, ere the Perfon
can be admitted a privado to the Airt;) then
will he fee a Multitude of Wight’s, like furious
hardie Men, flocking to him haiftily from all
Quarters, as thick as Atoms in the Air; which
are no Nonentities or Phantafms, Creatures
proceiding from ane affrighted Apprehenfione,
confufed or crazed Senfe, but Realities, appear¬
ing

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

ing to a (table Man in his awaking Senfe, and
enduring a rationall Tryall of their Being. Thes
thorow Fear (trick him breathlefs and fpeechlefs.
The Wizard, defending the Lawfullnefs of his
Skill, forbids fuch Horror, and comforts his
Novice by telling of Zacharias, as being (truck
fpeechlefs at feeing Apparitions, Luke, i. 20.
Then he further maintains his Airt, by vouching
Elilha to have had the (ame, and difclofd it
thus unto his Servant in 2 Kings, 6. 17. when
he blinded the Syrians; and Peter in Act, 5. 9.
forfeing the Death of Saphira, by perceaving as
it were her Winding-ftieet about her before
hand; and Paul, in 2nd Corinth. 12. 4. who
got fuch a Vifion and Sight as (hould not, nor
could be told. Elilha alfo in his Chamber faw
Gehazi his Servant, at a great Diltance, taking
a reward from Naaman, 2d Kings, 5. 26.
Hence were the Prophets frequently called
Seers, or Men of a 2d or more exhalted Sight
than others. He a6ts for his Purpofe alfo
Math. 4. 8. where the Devil undertakes to give
even Jefus a Sight of all Nations, and the fined
Things in the World, at one Glance, tho in

their

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their naturall Situations and Stations at a vaft
Diflance from other. And ’tis faid exprefly he
did let fie them; not in a Map it feems, nor
by a phantaftick magicall jugling of the Sight,
which he could not impofe upon fo difcovering
a Perfon. It would appear then to have been
a Sight of real folid Subfiances, and Things of
worth, which he intended as a Bait for his
Purpofe. Whence it might feem, (compairing
this Relation of Math. 4. 8. with the former,)
that the extraordinary or Second Sight can be
given by the Miniflery of bad as weill as good
Spirits to thofe that will embrace it. And the
Inflance of Balaam and the Pythenifs make
it nothing the lefs probable. Thus alfo the
Seer trains his Scholler, by telling of the Grada¬
tions of Nature, ordered by a wife Provydence;
that as the Sight of Bats and Owls tranfcend
that of Shrews and Moles, fo the vifive Faculties
of Men are clearer than thofe of Owls; as
Eagles, Lynxs, and Cats are brighter than Mens.
And again, that Men of the Second Sight
(being defigned to give warnings againfl fecret
Engyns) furpafs the ordinary Vifion of other

Men

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Men, which is a native Habit in fome, defcended
from their Anceftors, and acquired as ane arti-
ficiall Improvement of their natural Sight in
others; refembling in their own Kynd the
ufuall artificiall Helps of optic Glaffes, (as Pro-
fpe&ives, Telefcopes, and Microfcopes,) without
which afcititious Aids thofe Men here treated
of do perceive Things that, for their Smallnefs,
or Subtility, and Secrecy, are invisible to others,
tho dayly converfant with them; they having
fuch a Beam continuallie about them as that
of the Sun, which when it fhines clear only,
lets common Eyes fee the Atomes, in the Air,
that without thofe Rayes they could not difcem;
for fome have this Second Sight tranfmitted
from Father to Sone thorow the whole Family,
without their own Confent or others teaching,
proceeding only from a Bounty of Providence
it feems, or by Compadl, or by a complexionall
Quality of the firfl Acquirer. As it may feem
alike ftrange (yet nothing vicious) in fuch as
Mailer Great-rake, 1 the Irifh Stroaker, Seventh-
fons, and others that cure the King’s Evill,

and

1 Note (e), p. 88.

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

3i

and chafe away Defeafes and Pains, with only
ftroaking of the affedted Pairt; which (if it be
not the Reliques of miraculous Operations, or
fome fecret Virtue in the Womb, of the Parent,
which increafeth until Seventh-fons be borne,
and decreafeth by the fame Degrees after¬
wards,) proceids only from the fanitive Bal-
fome of their healthfull Conilitutions; Virtue
going out from them by fpirituous Effluxes un¬
to the Patient, and their vigorous healthy Spirits
affecting the fick as ufewally the unhealthy
Fumes of the fick infedt the found and whole.

13. The Minor Sort of Seers prognoilicat
many future Events, only for a Month’s Space,
from the Shoulder-bone of a Sheep on which
a Knife never came, (for as before is faid, and
the Nazarits of old had fomething of it) Iron
hinders all the Opperations of those that travell
in the Intrigues of thefe hidden Dominions.
By looking into the Bone, they will tell if
Whoredom be committed in the Owner’s Houfe;
what Money the Mailer of the Sheep had; if
any will die out of that Houfe for that Moneth;
and if any Cattell there will take a Trake, as

if

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if Planet-ltruck. Then will they prefcribe a
Prefervative and Prevention.

14. A Woman (it feems ane Exception from
the generall Rule,) fingularlie wife in thefe
Matters of Foirfight, living in Colafnach, ane
Ifle of the Hebrides, (in the Time of the Mar-
quefs of Montrofe his Wars with the States in
Scotland,) being notorious among many; and
fo examined by fome that violently feazed that
Ifle, if (he law them coming or not ? She laid,
(Jie law them coming many Hours before they
came in View of the Me. But earneltly look¬
ing, Ihe fome times took them for Enemyes,
fometime for Friends; and morover they look’t
as if they went from the Ifle, not as Men ap¬
proaching it, which made her not put the In¬
habitants on their Guard. The Matter was,
that the Barge wherein the Enemie failed, was
a little befoir taken from the Inhabitants of
that fame Ifle, and the Men had their Backs
towards the Ifle, when they were plying the
oares towards it. Thus this old Scout and
Delphian Oracle was at leall deceived, and did
deceave. Being aiked who gave her fuch Sights

and

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33

and Warnings, (he (aid, that as foon as (he fet
three Croffes of Straw upon the Palm of her
Hand, a great ugly Bead fprang out of the
Earth neer her, and flew in the Air. If what
(he enquired had Succefs according to her
Wi(h, the Bead would defcend calmly, and lick
up the Croffes. If it would not fucceid, the
Bead would furioufly thrud her and the Croffes
over on the Ground, and fo vani(h to his
Place.

15. Among other Indances of undoubted
Verity, proving in thefe the Being of fuch
aerial People, or Species of Creatures not vul¬
garly known, I add the fubfequent Relations,
fome whereof I have from my Acquaintance
with the A6tors and Patients, and the Red
from the Eye-witneffes to the Matter of Fadt.
The fird whereof (hall be of the Woman taken
out of her Child-bed, and having a lingring
Image of her fubdituted Bodie in her Roome,
which Refemblance decay'd, dy*d, and was
buPd. But the Perfon dollen returning to her
Hufband after two Years Space, he being con¬
vinced by many undenyable Tokens that (he
c was

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

was his former Wyfe, admitted her Home, and
had diverfe Children by her. Among other
Reports fhe gave her Hufband, this was one:
That fhe perceived litle what they did in the
fpacious Houfe fhe lodg’d in, untill fhe anointed
one of her Eyes with a certain Undtion that
was by her; which they perceaving to have
acqainted her with their Adtions, they fain’d
her blind of that Eye with a Puff of their
Breath. She found the Place full of Light,
without any Fountain or Lamp from whence
it did fpring. This Perfon lived in the Coun¬
trey nixt to that of my lafl Refidence, and
might furnifh Matter of Difpute amongfl Cafuifls,
whither if her Hufband had been mary’d in the
Interim of her two Years Abfence, he was
oblidged to divorfe from the fecond Spoufe at
the Return of the firfl. There is ane Airt,
appearingly without Superflition, for recovering
of fuch as are flolen, but think it fuperfluous
to infert it

I saw a Woman of fourtie Years of Age,
and examined her (having another Clergie Man
in my Companie) about a Report that pafl of

her

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35

her long falling \her Name is not intyre.] 1 It
was told by them of the Houfe, as well as her
felfe, that fhe tooke verie little or no Food
for feverall Years pall; that Ihe tarried in the
Fields over Night, faw and converted with a
People Ihe knew not, having wandered in feek-
ing of her Sheep, and fleep’t upon a Hillock,
and finding her felf tranfported to another Place
before Day. The Woman had a Child fince
that Time, and is Hill prettie melanchollyous
and filent, hardly ever feen to laugh. Her
natural Heat and radical Moillure feem to be
equally balanced, lyke ane unextinguilhed Lamp,
and going in a Circle, not unlike to the faint
Lyfe of Bees, and fome Sort of Birds, that deep
all the Winter over, and revive in the Spring.

It is ufuall in all magicall Airts to have the
Candidates prepofleflit with a Believe of their
Tutor’s Skill, and Ability to perform their Feats,
and a< 5 l their jugling Pranks and Legerdemain;
but a Perfon called Stewart, polfelTed with a
prejudice at that was fpoken of the 2d Sight,

1 Thus in the Manuscript, which is only a Transcript of
Mr. Kirk’s Original. Perhaps M'lntyre?

and

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36 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

and living near to my Houfe, was foe put to it
by a Seer, before many Witneffes, that he loft
his Speech and Power of his Legs, and breath¬
ing exceffively, as if expyring, becaufe of the
many fearfull Wights that appeared to him.
The Companies were forced to carrie him into
the Houfe.

It is notorioufly known what in Killin, within
Perthfhire, fell tragically out with a Yeoman
that liv’d hard by, who coming into a Companie
within ane Ale-houfe, where a Seer fat at Table,
that at the Sight of the Intrant Neighbour, the
Seer flarting, rofe to go out of the Hous; and
being afked the Reafon of his haft, told that
the intrant Man fhould die within two Days;
at which News the named Intrant ftabb’d the
Seer, and was himfelf executed two Days after
for the Fadt

A Minister, verie intelligent, but mifbeliev-
ing all fuch Sights as were not ordinar, chance-
ing to be in a narrow Lane with a Seer, who
perceaving a Wight of a known Vifage furiollie
to encounter them, the Seer defired the Minifler
to turn out of the Way; who fcorning his

Reafon

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37

Reafon, and holding him felfe in the Path with
them, when the Seer was going haflily out of
the Way, they were both violently caft a fide to
a good Diflance, and the Fall made them lame
for all their Lyfe. A little after the Minifler
was carried Home, one came to tol the Bell
for the Death of the Man whofe Representation
met them in the narrow Path fome Halfe ane
Hour before.

Another Example is: A Seer in Kintyre, in
Scotland, fitting at Table with diverfe others,
fuddenly did cafl his Head afide. The Com-
panie afking him why he did it, he anfwered,
that fuch a Friend of his, by Name, then in
Ireland, threatened immediately to cafl a Difh-
full of Butter in his Face. The Men wrote
down the Day and Hour, and fent to the
Gentleman to know the Truth; which Deed
the Gentleman declared he did at that verie
Time, for he knew that his Friend was a Seer,
and would make fport with it The Men that
were prefent, and examined the Matter exadlly,
told me this Story; and with all, that a Seer
would with all his Opticks perceive no other
Objedl fo readily as this, at fuch a Diflance.

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A SUCCINT ACCOMPT

OF

My LORD TARBOTTS RELATIONS,

IN A LETTER TO THE

Honourable ROBERT BOYLE, Esquire,

OF THE

PREDICTIONS MADE by SEERS,

Whereof himfelf was Ear and Eye-witnefs.

[I thought fit to adjoyne [it] hereunto, that I
might not be thought fingular in this Dif-
quifition; that the Mater of Fa< 5 t might
be undenyably made out; and that I
might, with all Submiflion, give Annota¬
tions, with Animadverfions, on his fuppofed
Caufes of that Phenomenon, with my
Reafons of Diflent from his Judgement.]

Sir,

I heard very much, but beleived very little,
of the Second Sight; yet its being aflumed

by

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

by feverall of great Veracity, I was induced
to make Inquirie after it in the Year 1652,
being then confin’d to abide in the North of
Scotland by the Englifh Ufurpers. The more
generall Accounts of it were, that many High¬
landers, yet far more Iflanders, were qualified
with this Second Sight; that Men, Women,
and Children, indiftindtly, were fubjedi to it,
and Children, where Parents were not. Some
times People came to age, who had it not
when young, nor could any tell by what
Means produced. It is a Trouble to moll of
them who are fubjedt to it, and they would
be rid of it any Rate if they could. The
Sight is of no long Duration, only continuing
fo long as they can keep their Eyes Heady
without twinkling. The hardy therefore fix
their look, that they may fee the longer; but
the timorous fee only Glances, their Eyes al¬
ways twinkles at the firft Sight of the Objedt
That which generally is feen by them, are the
Species of living Creatures, and of inanimate
Things, which was in Motion, fuch as Ships,
and Habits upon Perfons. They never fie

the

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4i

the Species of any Perfon who is already
dead. What they foirfie fails not to exift in
the Mode, and in that Place where it appears
to them. They cannot well know what Space
of Time fhall interveen between the Apparition
and the real Exiflance: But fome of the
hardied and longed Experience have fome
Rules for Conjectures; as, if they fie a Man
with a fhrowding Sheet in the Apparition, they
will conjecture at the Nearnefs or Remotenefs
of his Death by the more or lefs of his Bodie
that is covered by it. They will ordinarily lie
their abfent Friends, tho at a great Didance,
fome tymes no lefs than from America to
Scotland, fitting, danding, or walking in fome
certain Place; and then they conclude with a
Affurance that they will fie them fo and there.
If a Man be in love with a Woman, they will
ordinarily fie the Species of that Man danding
by her, and fo likewife if a Woman be in love;
and they conjecture at their Enjoyments (of
each other) by the Species touching (of) the
Perfon, or appearing at a Didance from her
(if they enjoy not one another.) If they fie

the

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

the Species of any Perfon who is fick to die,
they fie them covered over with the fhrowding
Sheet.

These Generalls I had verified to me by
fuch of them as did fie, and were efleemed
honed and fober by all the Neighbourhood;
for I inquired after fuch for my Information.
And becaufe there were more of thefe Seers
in the Ifles of Lewis, Harris, and Uid, than
in any other Place, I did entreat Sir James
McDonald (who is now dead) Sir Normand
M‘Loud, and Mr. Daniel Morifon, a verie
honeft Perfon, (who are dill alive,) to make
Inquirie in this uncouth Sight, and to acquaint
me therewith; which they did, and all found
ane Agriement in thefe Generalls, and informed
me of many Indances confirming what they
faid. But though Men of Difcretion and
Honour, being but at 2d Hand, I will choofe
rather to put myfelf than my Friends on the
Hazard of being laughed at for incredible
Relations.

I was once travelling in the Highlands, and
a good Number of Servants with me, as is ufuall

there

i

SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

43

there; and one of them going a little before
me, entering into a Houfe where I was to ftay
all Night, and going haiflily to the Door, he
fuddenly flept back with a Screech, and did
fall by a Stone, which hit his Foot. I afked
what the Matter was, for he feemed to be very
much frighted. He told me very ferioufly
that I fliould not lodge in that Houfe, becaufe
Ihortly a dead Coffin would be carried out of it,
for many were carrying of it when he was heard
cry. I negle&ing his Words, and flaying
there, he faid to other of his Servants, he was
forry for it, and that furely what he law would
Ihortly come to pafs. Tho no fick Perfon was
then there, yet the Landlord, a healthy High¬
lander, died of ane appople< 5 tick Fit before I
left the Houfe.

In the year 1653, Alexander Monro (after¬
ward Lieut. Coll, to the Earl of Dunbarton’s
Regiment,) and I were walking in a Place
called Ullabill, in Lochbroom, on a little Plain,
at the Foot of a rugged Hill. There was a
Servant working with a Spade in the Walk
before us; his Back was to us, and his Face to

the

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

the Hill Before we came to him, he let the
Spade fall, and looked toward the Hill. He
took Notice of us as wee patted neer by him,
which made me look at him; and perceiving
him to (lair a little ftrangely, I conjectured him
to be a Seer. I called at him, at which he
darted and foiled. What are you doing ? faid
I. He anfwered, I have feen a very llrange
Thing; ane Army of Englifhmen, leeding of
Horfes, coming doun that Hill; and a Number
of them are come down to the Plain, and eat¬
ing the Barley, which is growing in the Field
neer to the Hill This was on the 4th May,
(for I notted the Day,) and it was four or fyve
Days before the Barley was fown in the Field
he fpoke of Alexander Monro afked him how
he knew they were Engliflimen? He faid,
becaufe they were leeding of Horfes, and had
on Hats and Bootts, which he knew no Scot
Man would have there. We took little Notice
of the whole Storie, as other than a foolifh
Vifion; but wilhed that ane Englifli Partie
were there, we being then at Warr with them,
and the Place almoft unaccefiable for Horfe-

men

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45

men. But in the Beginning of Auguft ther-
after, the Earle of Midleton (then Lieut, for
the King in the Highlands) having occafion to
march a Party of his toward the South High¬
lands, he fent his Foot thorow a Place called
Inverlawell; and the Fore-partie which was
firfl down the Hill, did fall off eating the
Barley which was on the litle Plain under it
And Monro calling to mynd what the Seer told
us, in May preceiding, he wrote of it, and fent
ane Exprefs to me to Lochflin, in Rofs, (where
I then was) with it

I had Occafion once to be in Companie
where a Young Lady was, (excufe my not
naming of Perfons,) and I was told there was
a notable Seer in the Companie. I called him
to fpeak with me, as I did ordinarly when I
found any of them ; and after he had anfwered
me to feveral Queflions, I afked if he knew any
Perfon to be in love with that Lady. He laid
he did, but he knew not the Perfon; for during
the two Dayes he had been in her Company,
he perceaved one (landing neer her, and his
Head leaning on her Shoulder ; which he (aid

did

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46 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

' did fore-tell that the Man fhould marrie her,
and die before her, according to his Obferva-
tion. This was in the Year 1655. I defired
him to defcribe the Perfon, which he did; fo
that I could conjecture, by the Defcription, of
fuch a one, who was of that Ladyes Acquaint¬
ance, tho there were no thought of their Mar¬
riage till two Years thereafter. And having
Occafion, in the Year 1657, to find this Seer,
who was ane Iflander, in Company with the
other Perfon whom I conjectured to have been
defcribed by him, I called him afide, and aiked
if that was the Perfon he faw befide the Lady
near two Years then paft. He faid it was he
indeed, for he had feen that Lady juft then
ftanding by him Hand in Hand. This was
fome few Months before their Marriage, and
that Man is fince dead, and the Lady ftill alive.

I shall trouble you but with one more,
which I thought moft remarkable of any that
occurred to me. In Januyy 1652, the above
mentioned Lieut Coll. Alex. Monro and I
happened to be in the Houfe of one Wm.
M‘Cleud of Ferrinlea, in the County of Rols.

He

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47

He, the Landlord, and I were fitting in three
Chairs neir the Fire, and in the Corner of the
great Chimney there were two Iflanders, who
were that verie Night come to the Hous, and
were related to the Landlord. While the one
of them was talking with Monro, I perceaved
the other to look oddly toward me. From this
Look, and his being ane Wander, I conjedtured
him a Seer, and afked him, at what he flair’d ?
He anfwered, by defiring me to rife from that
Chair, for it was ane unluckie one. I afked
him why. He anfwered, becaufe there was a
dead Man in the Chair nixt to me. Well, faid
I, if it be in the nixt Chair, I may keep mine
own. But what is the Liknefs of the Man?
He faid he was a tall Man, with a long Grey
Coat, booted, and one of his Legs hanging over
the Arme of the Chair, and his head hanging
dead to the other Side, and his Arme back¬
ward, as if it were brocken. There were fome
Englifh Troops then quartered near that Place,
and there being at that Time a great Froft after
a Thaw, the Country was covered all over with
Yce. Four or Fyve of the Englifh ryding by

this

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48 SECRET COMMONWEALTH .

this Houfe fome two Hours after the Vifion,
while we were fitting by the Fire, we heard a
great Noife, which prov’d to be thofe Troopers,
with the Help of other Servants, carrying in
one of their Number, who had got a very mif-
cheivous Fall, and had his Arme broke; and
falling frequently in fwooning Fits, they brought
him into the Hall, and fet him in the verie
Chair, and in the verie Pofture that the Seer
had prophefied. But the Man did not die,
though he recovered with great Difficulty.

Among the Accounts given me by Sir Nor-
mand M‘clud, there was one worth of fpecial
Notice, which was thus. There [was] a Gentle¬
man in the Ifle of Harris, who was always feen
by the Seers with ane Arrow in his Thigh.
Such in the Ifle who thought thofe prognoflica-
tions infalliable, did not doubt but he would be
fhot in the Thigh before he died. Sir Nor-
mand told me that he heard it the Subje6t of
their Difcourfe for many Years. At laft he
died without any fuch Accident. Sir Normand
was at his Buriall, at St Clement’s Church in
the Harris. At the fame Time, the Corps of

another

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49

another Gentleman was brought to be buried
in the fame verie Church. The Friends on
either Side came to debate who fhould firfl
enter the Church, and in a Trice from Words
they came to Blows. One of the Number (who
was arm’d with Bow and Arrows) let one fly
among them. (Now everie Familie in that Ifle
have their Buriall-place in the Church in Stone
Chefls, and the Bodies are carried in open
Biers to the Buriall-place.) Sir Normand
having appeafed the Tumult, one of the Arrows
was found fhot in the dead Man’s Thigh. To
this Sir Normand was a Witnefs.

In the Account which Mr Daniel Morifon,
Parfon in the Lewis, gave me, there was one,
tho it be hetergeneous from the fubjedt, yet it
may [be] worth your Notice. It was of a
young Woman in his Parifh, who was mightily
frightned by feeing her own Image flill before
her, alwayes when fhe came to the open Air;
the Back of the Image being alwayes to her,
fo that it was not a refledtion as in a Mirrour,
but the Species of fuch a Body as her own, and
in a very like Habit, which appeared to herfelf
d continually

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continually before her. The Parfon keept her
a long whyle with him, but had no Remedy of
her Evill, which troubled her exceidingly. I
was told afterwards, that when (he was four or
fyve Years elder Ihe faw it not.

These are Matters of Fadt, which I allure
yow they are truely related. But thefe, and all
others that occurred to me, by Information or
otherwife, could never lead me into a remote
Conjecture of the Caufe of fo extraordinary a
Phenomenon. Whither it be a Quality in the
Eyes of fome People into thefe Pairts, concur¬
ring with a Quality in the Air alfo; whither
fuch Species be every where, tho not feen by
the Want of Eyes fo qualified, or from whatever
other Caufe, I mull leave to the Inquiry of
clearer Judgements than mine. But a Hint
may be taken from this image which appeared
Hill to this Woman abovementioned, and from
another mentioned by Arillotle, in the 4th of
his Metaphyficks (if I remember right, for it is
long fince I read it;) as alfo from the common
Opinion that young Infants (unfullied with
many Objedls) do fie Appearitions, which were

not

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5i

not feen by thofe of elder Years; as like wife
from this, that feveralls did fie the Second
Sight when in the Highlands or Ifles, yet when
tranfported to live in other Countreys, efpeci-
ally in America, they quite lofe this Qualitie, as
was told me by a Gentleman who knew fome
of them in Barbadoes, who did fee no Vifion
there, altho he knew them to be Seers when
they lived irt the Ifles of Scotland.

Thus far my Lord Tarbett

My Lord, after narrow Inquifition, hath de¬
livered many true and remarkable obferves
on this Subjedt; yet to encourage a further
Scrutiny, I crave leave to fay,

That i. But a few Women are endued with
this Sight in refpedt of Men, and their Predic¬
tions not fo certane.

2. This Sight is not criminal, fince a Man
can come by it unawares, and without his
Confent; but it is certaine he fie more fatall
and fearfull Things than he do gladfome.

3. The Seers avouch, that feveralls who go

to

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to the Siths, (or People at Rell, and, in refpect
of us, in Peace,) before the natural Period of
their Lyfe expyre, do frequently appear to
them.

4. A Vehement Defyre to attain this Airt is
very helpfull to the Inquyrer; and the Species
of ane Abfent Friend, which appears to the
Seers, as clearly as if he had fent his lively
Picture to prefent it felfe before him, is no
phantaftick Shaddow of a fick Apprehenfion,
but a reality, and a Meflinger, coming for un¬
known Reafons, not from the originall Simi¬
litude of it felfe, but from a more fwift and
pragmantick People, which recreat them felves
in offering fecret Intelligence to Men, tho
generally they are unacquainted with that Kind
of Correfpondence, as if they had lived in a
different element from them.

5. Tho my Collections were written long
before I faw My Lord of Tarbett’s, yet I am
glad that his defcriptions and mine correfpond
fo nearly. The Maid my Lord mentions, who
faw her Image ftill before her, futeth with the
Co-Walker named in my Account; which tho

fome

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53

fome, at firfl Thought, might conjedture to be
by the Refradtion of a Cloud or Mill, as in the
Parelij, (the whole Air and every Drop of
Water being a Mirrour to returne the Species
of Things, were our vifive Faculty fliarpe
enough to apprehend them,) or a naturall Re¬
flexion, from the fame Reafons that an Echo
can be redoubled by Airt; yet it were more
faiable to impute this Second Sight to a
Quality infufed into the Eye by ane Undtion:
for Witchies have a fleepie Oyntment, that, when
applyed, troubles their Fantafies, advancing it
to have unufuall Figures and Shapes repre-
fented to it, as if it were a Fit of Fanaticifm,
Hypocondriack Melancholly, or Pofieflion of
fome infinuating Spirit, raifmg the Soul beyond
its common Strain, if the palpable Inftances
and Realities feen, and innocently objedted to

i

the Senfes did not difprove it, make the Matter
a palpable Verity, and no Deception ; yet fince
this Sight can be beftowed without Oyntment,
or dangerous Compadt, the Qualification is not
of fo bad an Originall. Therefore,

6 . By my Lord’s good Leave, I prefume to

fay

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

fey, that this Sight can be no Quality of the
Air nor of the Eyes; becaus, i. such as live
in the feme Air, and fie all other Things as
farr off and as clearly, yet have not the Second
Sight. 2. A Seer can give another Perfon
this Sight tranfiently, by putting his Hand
and Foot in the Pofture he requires of him.
3. The unfullied Eyes of Infants can naturally
perceave no new unaccuftomed Objedts, but
what appear to other Men, unlefe exalted
and clarified fome Way, as Ballaam’s Afs for a
Time; tho in a Witches Eye the Beholder
cannot fie his own Image refledted, as in the
Eyes of other People; fo that Defedt of Ob-
jedts, as well as Diverfities of the Subjedfc,
may appear differently on feverall Tempers
and Ages. 4. Tho alfo fome are of fo vene-
mous a Conftitution, by being radicated in
Envy and Malice, that they pierce and kill
(like a Cockatrice) whatever Creature they firft
fet their Eye on in the Morning; fo was it
with Walter Grahame, fome Time living in
the Paroch wherein now I am, who killed his
own Cow after commending its Fatnefs, and

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fhot a Hair with his Eyes, having praifed its
fwiftnefs, (fuch was the Infection of ane evill
Eye;) albeit this was unufuall, yet he faw no
Object but what was obvious to other Men as
well as to himfelfe. 5. If the being tranf-
ported to live in another Countrey did obfcure
the Second Sight, nather the Parfon nor the
Maid needed be much troubled for her Reflex-
felfe; a little Peregrination, and going from
her wonted Home, would have falved her
Fear. Wherefore,

7. Since the Things feen by the Seers are
real Entities, the Prelages and Predictions
found true, but a few endued with this Sight,
and thofe not of bad Lyves, or addicted to
Malifices, the true Solution of the Phenome¬
non feems rather to be, the courteous Endeav¬
ours of our fellow Creatures in the Invifible
World to convince us, (in Oppofition to Sad-
duce’s, Socinians, and Atheifts,) of a Deity; of
Spirits; of a poffible and harmlefs Method of
Correfpondence betwixt Men and them, even
in this Lyfe; of their Operation for our Cau¬
tion and Warning; of the Orders and Degrees

of

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56 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

of Angells, whereof one Order, with Bodies of
Air condenfed and curioufly fhap’t, may be nixt
to Man, fuperior to him in Underftanding, yet
unconfirmed; and of their Region, Habitation,
and Influences on Man, greater than that of
Stans on inanimat Bodies; a Knowledge (be¬
like) referred for thefe lafl atheiflick Ages,
wherein the Profanity of Mens Lives hath de¬
bauched and blinded their Underftandii^g, as
to Moses, Jesus, and the Prophets, (unlefs
they get Convidtions from Things formerly
known,) as from the Regions of the Dead:
nor doth the ceafing of the Vifions, upon the
Seers Tranfmigration into forrein Kingdoms,
make his Lordffiip’s Conjedture of the Quality
of the Air and Eye a white the more pro¬
bable ; but, on the Contrary, it confirms greatly
my Account of ane Invifible People, guardian
over and care-full of Men, who have their
different Offices and Abilities in diftindt Coun-
terey’s, as appears in Dan. io. 13. viz. about
Ifraels, Grecian, and Perfia's affiflant Princes,
whereof who fo prevaileth giveth Dominion
and Afcendant to his Pupills and Vaffalls over

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the oppofite Armies and Countreys; fo that
every Countrey and Kingdom having their
topical Spirits, or Powers alfifting and govern¬
ing them, the Scottish Seer banifhed to
America, being a Stranger there, as well to
the invilible as to the vifible Inhabitants, and
wanting a Fimiliarity of his former Correfpon-
dents, he could not have the Favour and
Warnings, by the feverall Vifions and Predic¬
tions which were wont to be granted him by
thefe Acquantances and Favourites in his own
Countrey. For if what he wont to fie were
Realities, (as. I have made appear,) ’twere too
great ane Honour for Scotland to have fuch
feldom-feen Watchers and predominant Powers
over it alone, adling in it fo expreffly, and all
other Nations wholly deftitute of the lyke;
tho, without all peradventure, all other People
wanted the right Key of their Cabinet, and
the exa< 5 t Method of Correfpondence with them,
except the fagacious active Scots, as many of
them have retained it of a long Time, and by
Surpryfes and Raptures do often foirtell what
in Kyndnefs is really reprefented to them at

feverall

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feverall Occafions. To which Purpofe the
learned lynx-ey’d Mr. Baxter, on Rev. 12. 7.
writting of the Fight betwixt Michaell and the
Dragon, gives a verie pertinent Note, viz. That
he knows not but ere any great Action (efpeciall
tragicall) is don on Earth, that firft the Battell
and Vidtory is adted and atchieved in the Air
betwixt the good and evill Spirits: Thus he.
It feems thefe were the mens Guardians; and
the lyke Battells are oft tymes perceav’d in a
Loafit in the Nycht-time; the Event of which
myght ealily be reprefented by fome one of
the Number to a Correfpondent on Earth, as
frequently the Report of great Adlions have
been more fwiftly caried to other Countreys
than all the Airt of us Mortals could pofiibly
difpatch it. St. Aulline, on Mark, 9. 4. giveth
no fmall Intimation of this Truth, averring
that Elias appeared with Jefus on the Mount
in his proper Bodie, but Mofes in ane aereall
Bodie, affumed like the Angels who appeared,
and had Ability to eat with Abraham, tho no
Neceflity on the Account of their Bodies. As
lyke wife the late Dodtrine of the Pre-exiftence

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of Souls, living into aereall Vehicles, gives a
lingular Hint of the Poflibility of the Thing,
if not a diredt Proof? of the whole Affertion;
which yet moreover may be illuminated by
diverfe other Inflances of the lyke Nature,
and as wonderfull, befides what is above laid.
As,

8 . The invifible Wights which haunt Houfes
feem rather to be fome of our fubterranean
Inhabitants, (which appear often to Men of
the Second Sight,) than evill Spirits or Devills;
becaufe, tho they throw great Stones, Pieces
of Earth and Wood, at the Inhabitants, they
hurt them not at all, as if they adted not
malitioufly, like Devills at all, but in Sport,
lyke Buffoons and Drolls. All Ages have
affoorded fome obfcure Teflimonies of it, as
Pythagoras his Dodtrine of Tranfmigration;
Socrates’s Daemon that gave him [Warning] of
future Dangers; Platoe’s clafling them into
various vehiculated Speciefes of Spirits; Dio-
nilius Areopagita’s marfhalling nyne Orders of
Spirits, fuperiour and fubordinate; the Poets
their borrowing of the Philofophers, and add¬
ing

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ing their own Fancies of Fountain, River, and
Sea Nymphs, Wood, Hill, and Montain In¬
habitants, and that every Place and Thing,
in Cities and Countreys, had fpeciall invifible
regular Gods and Governours. Cardan fpeaks
of his Father his feeing the Species of his
Friend, in a moon-lhyn Night, riding fiercely
by his Window on a white Horfe, the verie
Night his Friend dy*d at a Vail Dillance from
him; by which he underllood that fome Altera¬
tion would fuddenly enfue. Cornelius Aggrippa,
and the learned Dr. Mor, have feverall Pair-
ages tending that Way. The No&ambulo’s
themfelves would appear to have fome forrein
joquing Spirit polfelfing and fupporting them,
when they walk on deep Waters and Topes
of Houfes without Danger, when alleep and
in the dark; for it was no way probable that
their Apprehenfion, and llrong Imagination
fetting the Animal Spirits a work to move the
Body, could preferve it from finking in the
Deepth, or falling down head-long, when alleep,
any more than when awake, the Body being
then as ponderous as before; and it is hard

to

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61

to attribute it to a Spirit flatelie evill and
Enemy to Man, becaufe the No6tambulo re¬
turns to his own Place fafe. And the mofl
furious Tribe of the Daemons are not per¬
mitted by Providence to attacke Men fo fre¬
quently either by Night or by Day: For in
our Highlands, as there may be many fair
Ladies of this aereal Order, which do often
tryfl with lafcivious young Men, in the quality
of Succubi, or lightfome Paramours and Strum¬
pets, called Leannain Sith , or familiar Spirits
(in Dewter. 18. n.); fo do many of our
Hyghlanders, as if a ftrangling by the Night
Mare, preffed with a fearfull Dream, or rather
poffeffed by one of our aereall Neighbours, rife
up fierce in the Night, and apprehending the
neereft Weapons, do pufh and thrufl at all
Perfons in the fame Room with them, fome-
tymes wounding their own Comerades to dead.
The lyke whereof fell fadly out within a few
Miles of me at the writting hereof I add
but one Inftance more, of a very young Maid,
who lived neir to my lafl Refidence, that in
one Night learned a large Peice of Poefy, by

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the frequent Repetition of it, from one of our
nimble and courteous Spirits, whereof a Part
was pious, the refl fuperflitious, (for I have a
Copy of it,) and no other Perfon was ever
heard to repeat it before, nor was the Maid
capable to compofe it of herfelf.

9. He demonftrated and made evident to
Senfe this extraordinary Vifion of our Tra-
montain Seers, and what is feen by them, by
what is laid above, many haveing feen this
fame Spectres and Apparitions at once, have¬
ing their vifive Faculties entire; for non ejl
difputandum de gujlu. Itt now remaines to
fhew that it is not unfutable to Reafon nor
the Holy Scriptures.

First, That it is not repugnant to Reafon,
doeth appear from this, that it is no lefs flrange
for Immortal Sparks and Souls to come and
be immerfed into grofs terreflrial elementary
Bodies, and be fo propagated, fo nourifhed,
fo fed, foe cloathed as they are, and breathe
in fuch ane Air and World prepared for them,
then for Hollanders or Hollow-cavern Inhabi¬
tants to live and traffick among us, in another

State

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH . 63

State of Being, without our Knowledge. For
Raymond de Subinde, in his 3d Booke, Chap.
12. argues quaintly, that all Sorts of Living
Creatures have a happie rational Politie of
there own, with great Contentment; which
Government and mutual Converfe of theirs
they all pride and pluim themfelves, becaufe
it is as unknown to Man, as Man is to them.
Much more, that the Sone of the Highest
Spirit Ihould affume a Bodie like ours, con¬
vinces all the World that no other Thing that
is poflible needs be much wondered at.

2. The Manucodiata, or Bird of Paradife,
living in the highell Region of the Air; com¬
mon Birds in the fecond Region; Flies and
Infedls in the lowefl; Men and Bealls on the
Earth’s Surface; Worms, Otters, Badgers, in
Waters; lyke wife Hell is inhabited at the
Centre, and Heaven in the Circumference:
can we then think the middle Cavities of the
Earth emptie? I have feen in Weems, (a
Place in the Countie of Fyfe, in Scotland,)
divers Caves cut out as vail Temples under
Ground; the lyke is a Countie of England;

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64 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

in Malta is a Cave, wherein Stons of a curious
Cut are thrown in great Numbers every Day;
fo I have had barbed Arrow-heads of yellow
Flint, that could not be cut fo fmall and
neat, of fo brittle a Subfiance, by all the Airt
of Man. It would feem therefoir that thefe
mention’d Works were done by certaine Spirits
of pure Organs, and not by Devills, whofe
continual Torments could not allow them fo
much Leafure. Befides thefe, I have found
fyve Curiofities in Scotland, not much obferv’d
to be elfewhere, i. The Brounies, who in
fome Families are Drudges, clean the Houfes
and Difhes after all go to Bed, taking with
him his Portion of Food and removing befor
Day-break. 2. The Mafon Word, which tho
fome make a Miflerie of it, I will not conceal
a little of what I know. It is lyke a Rabbini¬
cal Tradition, in way of Comment on Jachin
and Boaz, the two Pillars eredled in Solomon’s
Temple, (1 Kings, 7. 21.) with ane Addition
of fome fecret Signe dslyvered from Hand
to Hand, by which they know and become
familiar one with another. 3. This Second

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Sight, fo largely treated of before. 4. Charmes,
and curing by them very many Difeafes, fome-
times by transferring the Sicknes to another.
5. A being Proof of Lead, Iron, and Silver,
or a Brieve making Men invulnerable. Divers
of our Scottifh Commanders and Souldiers have
been feen with blue Markes only, after they
were (hot with leaden Balls; which feems to
be an Italian Trick, for they feem to be a
People too currious and magically inclyned.
Finally Iris-men, our Northern-Scotifh, and our
Athole Men are fo much addidted to and
delighted with Harps and Mufick, as if, like
King Saul, they were poffeffed with a forrein
Spirit, only with this Difference, that Mufick
did put Saul's Pley-fellow a lleep, but roufed
and awaked our Men, vanquifhing their own
Spirits at Pleafure, as if they were impotent
of its Powers, and unable to command it; for
wee have feen fome poor Beggers of them,
chattering their Teeth for Cold, that how foon
they faw the Fire, and heard the Harp, leapt
thorow the Houfe like Goats and Satyrs. As
there paralell Stories in all Countries and Ages
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reported of thefe our obfcure People, (which
are no Dotages,) fo is it no more of Neceffitie
to us fully to know their Beings and Manner
of Life, then to underfland diftindtiy the Politie
of the nyne Orders of Angels; or with what
Oyl the Lamp of the Sun is maintained fo
long and regularlie; or why the Moon is called
a great Luminary in Scripture, while it only
appears to be fo; or if the Moon be truly
inhabited, becaufe Telefcopes difcover Seas
and Mountains in it, as well as flaming Fur-
nifhes in the Sun; or why the Difcovery of
America was look’t on as a Fairie Tale, and
the Reporters hooted at as Inventors of ridi¬
culous Utopias, or the firil probable Afferters
punifhed as Inventures of new Gods and
Worlds; or why in England the King cures
the Struma by ftroaking, and the Seventh Son
in Scotland; whither his temperat Complexion
conveys a Balfome, and fucks out the corrupt¬
ing Principles by a frequent warme fanative
Contact, or whither the Parents of the Seventh
Child put furth a more eminent Virtue to his
Production than to all the Reft, as being the

certain

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH . 67

certain Meridian and hight to which their
Vigour afcends, and from that furth have a
graduall declyning into a feeblenefs of the
Bodie and its Production. And then, 1. Why
is not the 7th Son infeCted himfelfe by that
Contagion he extracts from another ? 2. How

can continual flroaking with a cold Hand have
foe flrong a natural Operation, as to exhale
all the Infections warming corroding Vapours.
3. Why may not a 7th Daughter have the
fame Vertue? So that it appears, albeit, a
happie natural Conflitution concurre, yet fome-
thing in it above Nature. Therefore every
Age hath left fome fecret for its Difcoverie;
who knows but this Entercourfe bewixt the
two Kinds of rationall Inhabitants of the fame
Earth may be not only beleived fhortly, but
as friely entertain’d, and as well known, as
now the Airt of Navigation, Printing, Limning,
riding on Saddles with Stirrups, and the Dif-
coveries of Microfcopes, which were fometimes
a great a Wonder, and as hard to be beleived.

10. Tho I will not be fo curious nor fo
.peremptorie as he who will prove the Pofi-

bility

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bility of the Philofopher’s Stone from Scrip¬
ture, Job, 28. 1. 2. Job, 22. 24. 25.; or the
Pluralitie of Worlds, from John, 14. 2. and
Hebrews ij. 3.; nor the Circulation of Blood
from Eccles. 12. and 6.; nor the Tanifmanical
Airt, from the Blind and Lame mentioned
in 2d of Samuel, 5. 6. yet I humblie propofe
thefe Paffages which may give fome Light to
our Subject at leaft, and (how that this Polity
and Rank of People is not a Thing impoflible,
nor the modeft and innocent Scrutiny of them
impertinent or unfafe. The Legion or Brigad
of Spirits (mentioned Mark, 5. 10.) befought
our Saviour not to fend them away out of the
Countrey; which fhows they were D^emones
Loci, Topical Spirits* and peculiar Superin¬
tendents and Supervifors aflign’d to that Pro¬
vince. And the Power over the Nations
granted (Rev. 2. 26.) to the Conquerors of
Vice and Infidelitie, Sound fomewhat to that
Purpofe. Tobit had a Daemon attending
Marriage, Chap. 6. Verfe, 15; and in Matth.
4. and 5. ane evill Spirit came in a Vifible
Shape to tempt our Saviour, who himfelfe

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH . 69

denyed not the fenfible appearing of Ghofts
to our Sight, but faid, their Bodies were not
compofed of Flelh and Bones, as ours, Luke,
24. 39. And in Philip. 2. 10. our verie Sub¬
terraneans are expreffly (aid to bow to the
Name of Jesus. Eliflia, not intellectually only,
but fenfibly, faw Gehazi when out of the Reach
of ane ordinary View. It wants not good
Evidents that there are more managed by
God's Spirits, good, evill, and intermediate
Spirits, among Men in this World, then we
are aware of; the good Spirits ingefting fair
and heroick Apprehenfions and Images of
Vertue and the divyne Life, thereby animating
us to aCt for a higher Happines, according
to our Improvement; and relinquifhing us as
ftrangely upon our NegleCt, or our embrace-
ing the deceatfull fyrene-like Pictures and Re-
prefentations of Pleafures and Gain, prefented
to our Imaginations by evill and fportfull
Angells, to allure to ane unthinking, ungene¬
rous, and fenfual Lyfe; non of them having
power to compell us to any Mifdemeanour
without our flat Confent. Moreover, this Life

of

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of ours being called a Warfair, and God's lay¬
ing that at laii there will be no Peace to the
Wicked, our buflie and filent Companions alfo
being called Siths, or People at Reft and Quiet,
in refpedt of us; and withall many Gholls
appearing to Men that want this Second Sight,
in the very Shapes, and fpeaking the lame
Language, they did when incorporate and alive
with us; a Matter that is of ane old impre-
fcriptible Tradition, (our Highlanders making
Hill a Diftindlion betwixt Sluagh Saoghalta
and Sluagh Sith, averring that the Souls goe
to the Sith when diflodged;) many real Trea-
fures and Murders being difcovered by Souls
that pals from among our felves, or by the
Kindnefs of thefe our airie Neighbours, non
of which Spirits can be altogither inorganical.
No lels than the Confeits about Purgatory, or
a State of Refcue; the Limbus Patrum et Infan¬
tum, Inventions, [which] tho milapplyed, yet
are not Chimseras, and altogither groundlels.
For ab origine, it is nothing but blanfh and
faint Difcoveries of this Secret Republick of
ours here treated on, and additional Fictions

of

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7 i

of Monks doting and crazied Heads, our Creed
laying that our Saviour defcended */$ # 3 ou, to the
invifible Place and People. And many Divines
fuppofing that the Deity appear’d in a vifible
Shape feen by Adam in the Cooll of the Day,
and fpeaking to him with ane audible voice.
And Jefus, probably by the Minillery of in¬
vifible Attendants, conveying more meat of the
lame Kind to the fyve Thowfand that wes fed
by him with a very few Loaves and Fifties,
(for a new Creation it was not.) The Zijm-
jiim and Ochim, in Ila. 13. 21. 22. Thes
Satyres, and doolfull unknown Creatures of
Illands and Deferts, feem to have a plain Pro-
fpedt that Way. Finally, the eternal Happi-
nefs enjoyed in the 3d Heavens, being more
myllerious than moll of Men take it to be.
It is not a fenfe whollie adduced to Scripture
to lay, that this Sight, and the due Objedts
of it, hath fome Vellige in holy Write, but
rather ’tis modeltly deduced from it.

11. It only now remains to anfear the obvious
Objections againll the Reality and Lawfullnefs
of this Speculation.

Quellion

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Question i. How do you falve the Second
Sight from Compadl and Witchcraft ?

Answer. Tho this Correfpondence with the
Intermediate Unconfirm’d People (betwixt Man
and Angell) be not ordinary to all of us who
are Superterraneans, yet this Sight falling fome
Perfons by Accident, and its being connatural
to others from their Birth, the Derivation of it
cannot always be wicked. A too great Curio-
fitie, indeed, to acquyre any unneceffary Airt,
may be blameworthy; but diverfe of the
Secret Commonwealth may, by Permifiion,
difcover themfelves as innocently to us, who are
in another State, as fome of us Men do to
Fifties, which are in another Element, when we
plunge and dive into the Bottom of the Seas,
their native Region; and in Procefs of Time we
may come to converfe as familiarly with thefe
nimble and agile Clans (but with greater Plea-
fure and Profit,) as we do now with the Chino’s
Antipodes.

Question 2. Are they fubjedl to Vice,
Lusts ? Paflion, and Injuftice, as we who live
on the Surface of the Earth ?

Anfwer

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Answer. The Seers tell us that thefe wander¬
ing Aereal People have not fuch an Impetus
and fatall Tendency to any Vice as Men, as
not being drenched into fo grofs and dregy
Bodies as we, but yet are in ane imperfedt
State, and fome of them making better Efiays
for heroick Adtions than others; having the
fame Meafures of Vertue and Vice as wee, and
flill expedting advancement to a higher and
more fplendid State of Lyfe. One of them is
ftronger than many Men, yet do not incline to
hurt Mankind, except by Commiflion for a grofs
Mifdemeanour, as the deftroying Angell of
^Egypt, and the Affyrians, Exod. 12. 29. 2
Kings, 10. 35. They haunt moft where is moil
Barbaritie; and therefoir our ignorant Ancef-
tors, to prevent the Infults of that ftrange
People, ufed as rude and courfe a Remedie;
fuch as Exorcifms, Donations, and Vows : But
how foon ever the true Piety prevailed in any
Place, it did not put the Inhabitants beyond
the Reach and Awthoritie of thefe fubtile in-
feriour Co-inhabitants and Colleagues of ours:
The Father of all Spirits, and the Perfon

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himfelfe, having the only Command of his Soul
and Actions, a concurrance they may have to
what is virtuously done; for upon committing
of a foul Deed, one will find a Demure upon
his Soul, as if his cheerfull Collegue had de-
ferted him.

Question 3. Do thefe airie Tribes pro¬
create ? If fo, how are they nourifhed, and at
what period of Time do they die?

Answer. Suppofing all Spirits to be created
at once in the Beginning, Souls to pre-exist and
to circle about into feveral States of Probation-
fhip; to make them either totally unexculable,
or perfectly happie againft the lad Day, folves
all the Difficulties. But in very Deed, and
fpeaking futeable to the Nature of Things, there
is no more Abfurditie for a Spirit to inform ane
Infant in Bodie of Airs, than a Bodie compofed
of dull and drufie Earth; the bed of Spirits
have alwayes delyghted more to appear into
aereal, than into terredrial Bodyes. They feed
mod what on Quinteffences, and aetheriall
Effences. The Pith and Spirits only of
Women’s Milk feed their Children, being arti¬
ficially

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SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

75

ficially conveyed, (as Air and Oyl fink into our
Bodies,) to make them vigorous and frefli.
And this fhorter Way of conveying a pure Ali¬
ment, (without the ufuall Digeflions,) by tranf-
fufing it, and tranfpyring thorow the Pores into
the Veins, Arteries, and Veflells that fupplie the
Bodie, is nothing more abfurd, than ane Infant’s
being fed by the Navel before it is borne, or
than a Plant, which groweth by attradling a
livelie Juice from the Earth thorow many finall
Roots and Tendons, whose courier Pairts be
adapted and made connatural to the Whole,
doth quickly coalefce by the ambient Cold;
and fo are condenf’d and bak’d up into a con¬
firm’d Wood in the one, and folid Bodie of the
Flefli and Bone in the other. A Notion which,
if intertained and approv’d, may (hew that the
late Invention of foaking and tranffufing (not
Blood, but) athereal virtuall Spirits, may be ufe-
full both for Nourilhment and Health, whereof
is a Veflige in the damnable Pra&ife of evill
Angells, their fucking of Blood and Spirits out
of Witches Bodys (till they drew them into a
deform’d and dry Leannefe,) to feid their own

Vehicles

MStosinir - -

*

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76 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

Vehicles withall, leaving what we call the
Witches Mark behind; a Spot that I have
feen, as a fmall Mole, homy, and brown-
coloured; throw which Mark, when a large
Brafs Pin was thruft (both in Buttock, Nofe,
and RoofF of the Mouth,) till it bowed and
become crooked, the Witches, both Men and
Women, nather felt a Pain, nor did bleed, nor
knew the precife Time when this was adoing to
them, (there Eyes only being covered.) Now
the Air being a Body as well as Earth, no
Reafon can be given why there may not be
Particles of more vivific Spirit form’d of it for
Procreation, then is poffible to be of Earth,
which takes more Time and Pains to rarify and
ripen it, ere it can come to have a prolific
Virtue. And if our Aping Darlings did not
thus procreate, there whole Number would be
exhaufted after a confiderable Space of Time.
For tho they are of more refyned Bodies and
Intelledtualls than wee, and of far lefs heavy
and corruptive Humours, (which caufe a Dif-
folution,) yet many of their Lives being dif-
fonant to right Reafon and their own Laws,

and

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77

and their Vehicles not being wholly frie of Luft
and Pafiion, efpecially of the more fpirituall
and hautie Sins they pafs (after a long healthy
Lyfe) into one Orb and Receptacle fitted for
their Degree, till they come under the general
Cognizance of the lail Day.

Question 4. Doth the acquiring of this
Second Sight make any Change on the Ac¬
quirers Body, Mind, or Adtions?

Answer. All uncouth Sights enfeebles the
Seer. Daniel, tho familiar with divyne Vifions,
yet fell frequently doun without Strength, when
dazzled with a Power which had the Afcendant
of, and paffed on him beyond his Comprehen-
fion, Chap. 10. 8. 17. So our Seer is put in
a Rapture, Tranfport, and fort of Death, as
divefled of his Body and all its Senfes, when
he is firft made participant of this curious
Peice of Knowledge : But it maketh no Wramp
or Strain in the Underltanding of any; only to
the Fancy’s of clownish or illiterate Men, it
creates fome Afirightments and Diilurbances,
becaufe of the Strongnefs of the Showes, and
their Unacquaintednefe with them. And as for

their

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78 SECRET COMMONWEALTH.

their Lyfe, the Perfons endued with this Rarity
are, for the mod Part, candid, honed, and
fociable People. If any of them be fubjedl to
Immoralities, this obdrufe Skill is not to be
blamed for it; for unlefs themfelves be the
Tempters, the Colonies of the Invifible Planta¬
tions, with which they intercommune, do pro¬
yoke them by no Villainy or Malifice, nather
at their fird Acquaintance nor after a long
Familiarity.

Question 5. Doth not Sathan interpofe in
fuch Cafes by many fubtile unthought Infinua-
tions, as to him who let the Fly, or Familiar,
go out of the Box, and yet found the Fly of his
own putting in, as ferviceable as the other
would have been ?

Answer. The Goodnefs of the Lyfe, and
Defigns of the ancient Prophets and Seers, was
one of the bed Prooffs of their Million. 1

1 The original Transcriber has added:

“ See the Rest in a little Manuscript belonging to Coline
Kirk,” probably the author’s son of that name.—A.L.

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NOTE.

In trying to collect evidence as to the Rerrick
“evil spirit” from Kirk-Session Records, I
have been most kindly assisted by the Rev.
Mr. M‘Conachie, Minister of Rerrick. Mr.
M‘Conachie finds that only two parishes in the
Stewartry, Kells and Girthon, have records con¬
taining the years 1695, 1696. The records of
Rerrick do not go so far back. We are there¬
fore left to the pamphlet of 1696, by Telfair,
which is an unusually business-like statement,
the names of attesting witnesses being added in
the marginal notes. For phenomena singularly
similar to those of Rerrick, Obeah, by Mr. H.
J. Bell, may be consulted. ( Obeah , Sampson
Low & Co., London, 1889, p. 93.)

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NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.

Note (a), p. xvi.—“The Psychical Society.”

The Psychical Society, as far as the writer is aware
has not examined officially the old accounts of the phe¬
nomena which it investigates at present. The Catalogue
of the Society’s Library, however, proves that it doe3
not lack the materials.

Note (6), p. xxx.—“Their speech is a kind of whistling.”

That the voice of spirits is a kind of whistling, twit¬
tering, or chirping, is a very widely diffused and ancient
belief. The ghosts in Homer twitter like bats ; in New
Caledonia an English settler found that he could scare
the natives from a piece of ground by whistling there at
night. Mr. Samuel Wesley says, “ I followed the noise
into almost every room in the house, both by day and
by night, with lights and without, and have sat alone
for some time, and, when I heard the noise, spoke to it
to tell me what it was, but never heard any articulate
voice, and only once or twice two or three feeble squeaks,
a little louder than the chirping of a bird, and not like
the noise of rats, which I have often heard ” (Memoirs of
the Wesley Family , p. 164). Professor Alexander men¬
tions the “ pecular whistling sound ” at some manifesta¬
tions in Rio Janeiro as “rather frequent ” ( Proc . S. P. R. t

81 p

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82

NOTES.

xix. 180). Here children were the mediums; how did
they get the idea of the traditional whistle ? See also
the following note.

Note (c), p. zL—“ Not long after the Spanish conquest
of Peru.**

The phenomena alluded to here are said to have
occurred in 1549. The evidence is a mere report by
Cieza de Leon, who does not pretend to have been an
eye-witness. But, as Mr. Clements Markham, Cieza’s
editor, remarks, the phenomena are analogous to those
of spiritualism. At the very least, we find a belief in
this kind of manifestation at a remote date, and in an
outlandish place. Cieza says: 1

"When the Adelantado Belalcazar was governor of
the province of Popyan, and when Gomez Hernandez
was his lieutenant in the town of Auzerma, there was a
chief in a village called Pirsa, almost four leagues from
the town, whose brother, a good-looking youth named
Tamaraqunga, inspired by God, wished to go to the
town of the Christians to receive baptism. But the
devils did not wish that he should attain his desire,
fearing to lose what seemed secure, so they frightened
this Tamaraqunga in such sort that he was unable to do
anything. God permitting it, the devils stationed them¬
selves in a place where the chief alone could see them,
in the shape of birds called auras . Finding himself so
persecuted by the devils, he sent in great haste to a
Christian living near, who came at onoe, and hearing
what he wanted, signed him with the sign of the cross.
But the devils then frightened him more than ever,
appearing in hideous forms, which only were visible to

1 The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de Leon t ch. czviii.

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NOTES.

83

him. The Christian only saw stones falling from the air
and heard whistling. A brother of one Juan Pacheco,
citizen of the same town, then holding office in the
place of Gomez Hernandez, who had gone to Cara-
manta, came from Auzerma with another man to visit
the Indian chief. They say that Tamaraqunga was
much frightened and ill-treated by the devils, who
carried him through the air from one place to another
in presence of the Christians, he complaining and the
devils whistling and shouting. Sometimes when the
chief was sitting with a glass of liquor before him, the
Christians saw the glass raised up in the air and put
down empty, and a short time afterwards the wine was
cgain poured into the cup from the air/' Compare what
I bn Batuta, the old Arab traveller, saw at the court of
the King of Delhi. The matter is discussed in Colonel
Yule’s Marco Polo.

This may suffice as a specimen of the manifestations.
They continued while the chief was on his way to
church; he was lifted into the air, and the Christians
had to hold him down. In church the ghostly whistling
was heard, and stones fell around, while the chief said
that he Baw devils standing upside down, and himself
was thrown into that unusual posture. The combination
of convulsive movements with the other phenomena is
that which we have already remarked in the cases of
44 Mr. H.” aud the grandson of William Morse. Cieza de
Leon says that the chief was not troubled after his baptism.
The illusions of the newly-converted, so like those of the
early Christian hermits, are described by Callaway in his
Zulu Tales.

Note (d), p. 1.

Priestley’s explanation of the Epworth disturbances is
imposture by the servants, by way of a practical joke.

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8 4

NOTES.

Coleridge, on the other hand, says that “ all these stories,
and I could produce fifty cases at least equally well
authenticated, and, as far as the veracity of the narra¬
tors, and the single fact of their having seen and heard
such and such sights or sounds, above all rational seep*
ticism, are as much like one another as the symptoms of
the same disease in different patients.*’

It is a pity that Coleridge did not produce his fifty well-
authenticated examples. The similarity of the narratives
everywhere, all the world over, is exactly what makes them
interesting. Coleridge goes on: * This indeed I take to be
the true and only solution—a contagious nervous disease,
the acme, or intensest form of which is catalepsy”
(Southey’s Wesley , vol. L p. 14, Coleridge’s note). If
there be such a contagious nervous disease, it is a very
remarkable malady, and well worth examining. The
Wesleys were not alarmed ; they bantered the spirit;
they wished they could set him to work; and beyond
the trembling of the children when Jeffrey was knocking
during their sleep, there is no sign of morbid conditions.
A neighbouring clergyman, who was asked to pass a
night in the house, saw and heard just what the others
heard and saw. 1 The hypothesis of a contagious nervous
disease, in which every witness exhibits the same symp¬
toms of illusion in all parts of the world, is a theory
which needs a good deal of verification. Where mate¬
rial traces of the disturbances remain, it is absurd to
speak of contagious hallucinations. We must fall back
on the hypothesis of trickery, or must say with Southey,
“ Such things may be preternatural, yet not miraculous ;
they may not be in the ordinary course of nature, yet
imply no alteration of its laws.” Any theory is more
plausible than the idea that Mr. Wesley and Mr. Hoole

1 Mr. Hoole’s account, Memoirs of the Wesleys , p. 91.

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NOTES.

85

were in a state bordering on catalepsy. Believers in
hypnotism may think it possible that this, that, and the
other persons, if they submitted themselves to hypnotic
influences, might have the same hallucinations suggested
to them. But there is no evidence, in the Epworth
case nor in the Rerrick case, of any such matter. “ So
far as we yet know, sensory hallucination of several
persons together, who are not in a hypnotic state, is a
rare phenomenon, and therefore not a probable explana¬
tion ” ( Proc . S. P . R ., iv. 62). There is some evidence
that epileptic patients suffer from the same illusions
—for example, the presence of a woman in a red cloak ;
and in delirium tremens the “horrors” are usually
similar. But that all the persons who enter a given
house should be impressed by the same material illusions,
as of chairs and tables, and even beds (like Nancy
Wesley’s) flying about, is a theory more incredible than
the hypothesis either of trickery or of abnormal occur¬
rences. When the disturbances always cease on the
arrival of a competent witness, then it is not hard to say
which theory we ought to choose. For imposture see
next note.

Note ( e ), p. lvii.—“Children at stances”

The phenomena discussed are most frequently con¬
nected with children, who may be regarded either as
mediums or impostors, conscious or unconscious. In
Proc . S. P. R., iv. 25-42, Professor Barrett gives the
case of a little girl whom he knew. She had raps wher¬
ever she went, even when alone with the Professor, who
made her stand with her hands against the wall, at the
greatest stretch of her arms, “ with the muscles of the
legs and arms all in tension.” “A brisk pattering of
raps” followed Professor Barrett’s request. But he
also mentions a boy “of juvenile piety,” who “for twelve

86

NOTES .

monthi deceived his father, a distinguished surgeon, and
all his family, by pretended spiritualistic manifestations,
which appeared at first sight inexplicable, until the
cunning trickery of the lad was discovered.’* The only
difference between these cases is that an “ outsider ”
discovered trickery in one instance and not in the other.
This is a very ticklish kind of certainty, and it is plain
that children can do a great deal in the way of mere
imposture. The state of any young Wesley who might
have been caught out is unenviable. Verily Mr. Wesley
would not have spared for his crying.

Note (/), p. lxii.—“The pricking of witches.”

It is pretty certain that some of these unlucky old
women were pricked “in anaesthetic areas.”

Note (a), p. 8.—“These Arrows that fly in the Dark.”

The arrows are the ancient flint arrow-heads, which
Mr. Kirk later asserts to be too delicate for human
artificers. On this matter Isabel Gowdie, the witch,
confessed, “ As for Elf arrows, the Divell sharpes them
with his ain hand, and deliveris them to Elf boys, wha
whyttlis and dightia them with a sharp thing lyk a
paking needle ; bot whan I was in Elfland, I saw them
whyttling and dighting them.” Isabel described the
manner in which witches use this artillery : “ We spang
them from the naillis of our thooznbs,” and wdth these
she and her friends shot and slew many men and women.
The confessions of Isabel Gowdie are in the third volume
of Pitcairn’s Scottish Criminal Trials. They contain little
or nothing of the “psychical;” all is mere folk-lore^.
• fairy tales, and charms derived from the old Catholic
liturgy. The poor woman, having begun to fable, fabled

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NOTES.

8 7

with manifest enjoyment and considerable power. It
seems from her account that each “ Covin,” or assembly
of witches, had a maiden in it, and “ without our maiden
we could do no great thing.” On the other hand, an
extraordinary case of an epileptio boy, who was hurled
about, and beheld distant occurrences in trance, may be
read in Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, iii 449.
Candles used to go out when this boy, a third son of
Lord Torpichen, was in the room. The date (1720) and
the place (Mid-Lothian) prevented any one from being
burned for bewitching him. A fast was proclaimed.
The boy recovered, and did good service in the navy.
He is said to have been “levitated ” frequently.”

Note (6), p. 11.—“Milk thorow a hair-tedder.”

Isabel Gowdie confessed to stealing milk from the
cow by magic. “We plait the rope the wrong way, in
the Devil’s name, and we draw the tether between the
cow's hind feet, and out betwixt her forward feet, in the
Devil’s name, and thereby take with us the cow's milk.”

Mr. Kirk, it will be observed, does not connect the
Fairy kingdom with that of Satan, as some of his con¬
temporaries were inclined to do.

Note (c), p. 19.—“The Wreath (wraith) ... is only
exuvious fumes of the Man, . . . exhaled and con¬
gealed into a various likeness.”

What is this theory of “ Men illiterate and unwary in
their Observations,” but Von Hartmann’s doctrine of
“the nerve force which issues from the body of the
medium, and then proceeds to set up fresh oentres of
force in all neighbouring objects . . . while it still
remains under the control of the medium’s unconscious
will”? See Mr. Walter Leaf on Hartmann's Der
Geuterhypothese des Spiritimus , Prow S. P. R., xix. 293.

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88

NOTES.

It is amusing to find a learned German coinciding in
scientific theory with “ ignorant and unwary ” Highland
seers. Both regard the phantasms as manifestations of
“nerve-force,” “exuvious fumes,” and as “neither souls
nor counterfeiting spirits.”

Note ( d ), p. 23.—“Fairy hills.”

The hypothesis that the Fairy belief may be a tradi¬
tion of an ancient race dwelling in subterranean homes,
is older than Mr. McRitchie or Sir Walter Scott. In
his Scottish Scenery (1803), Dr. Cririe suggests that the
germ of the Fairy myth is the existence of dispossessed
aboriginals dwelling in subterranean houses, in some
plaoes called Piets’ houses, covered with artificial mounds.
The lights seen near the mounds are lights actually
carried by the mound-dwellers. Dr. Cririe works out in
some detail “this marvellously absurd supposition,” as
the Quarterly Review calls it (vol. lix., p. 280).

Note (e), p. 30.—“Master Greatrake, the Irish Stroaker.”

Glanvill, in Essays on Several Important Subjects (1675),
prints a letter from an Irish Bishop on Greatrex, the
“stroker.” He cured diseases “by a sanative conta¬
gion.” According to the Bishop, Greatrex had an im¬
pression that he could do “ faith-healing,” and found that
he could, but whether by virtue of some special power
or by “ the people’s fancy,” he knew not. He frequently
failed, and his patients had relapses. See his own
Account of Strange Cures: in a Letter to Robert Boyle.
London, 1666.

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POSTSCRIPT.

It has been said that no trace can be found of
a printed Secret Commonwealth before 1815.
The present editor is inclined to believe that in
1699 the work was still in manuscript. In a
letter of Lord Reay’s to Mr. Samuel Pepys (Oct.
24, 1699), he says, “I have got a manuscript
since I last came to Scotland, whose author,
though a parson, after giving a very full account
of the Second Sight, defends there being no sin
in it. . . . With the first opportunity I shall
send you a copy of his books.” This descrip¬
tion answers very well to Mr. Kirk’s treatise,
and to no other contemporary work with which
I am acquainted, unless it be A Discourse of the
Second Sight , by the Rev. Mr. John Frazer,
minister of Tiree and Coll. There were, doubt¬
less, other parsons busy with these topics; and
the minister of Rerrick informs me that several
MSS. by Mr. Telfair, author of the tract already

89

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POSTSCRIPT .

quoted, were only dispersed about 1877. Ex¬
amples of these clerical psychical researchers
may be found in C. K. Sharpe’s prefatory notice
to Law’s Memorials (Edinburgh, 1818). Such
an one is the Rev. Robert Knox, who writes
from Cavers to the Rev. Mr. Wyllie on the case
of Sir George Maxwell of Pollock. He dare
not attribute the mediumship of Janet Douglas
“ positively to an evil cause. ... It is onr
ignorance of any natural agent that makes us
impute the effects to evil spirits” ( Memorials ,
p. lxxv). Moreover, Lord Reay writes as if his
“parson” were still alive in 1699, whereas Mr.
Kirk “ went to his own herd ” in 1692. " I am

promised the acquaintance of this man, of which
I am very covetous.” Lord Reay was at Dur¬
ness, and may not have heard of the mishap
which carried the minister of Aberfoyle into
Fairyland. It may be added that Dr. Hickes
writes to Mr. Pepys about neolithic arrow heads
as “a subject of near alliance to that of the
Second Sight, and of witchcraft, which is akin
to them both.” He also speaks of “a very
tragical, but authentic story told me by the
Duke of Lauderdale, which happened in the
family of Sir John Dalrymple, Laird of Stair,

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POSTSCRIPT . 91

and then Lord President. His Grace had no
sooner told it me, but my Lord President coming
into the room, he desired my Lord to tell it
himself, which, altering his countenance, he did
with a very melancholick air; but it is so long
since that I dare not trust my memory with
relating the particulars of it” (June 19, 1700).

Dr. Hickes calls the first Lord Stair “John,”
Scott calls him “James.” There can be no
doubt that Dr. Hickes refers to the woful tale
of the bride of Lammermoor, who died on Sep¬
tember 12, 1669. Law, in his Memorials , says
she “ was harled through the house ”—by spirits,
he means. This “ harling ” or tossing about of
a patient, probably epileptic, we have noticed
in many of the old stories, as in the modem
instance of “ Mr. H” Now, in his Introduction
to the Bride of Lammermoor , Scott gives all
the authorities at his command: Law, Symson’s
J Elegie, and Hamilton of Whitelaw’s Satire , which
avers that Satan seized the bride and “threw
the bridegroom from the nuptial bed.” Sir
Walter was unacquainted with Dr. Hickes’ hint,
which actually produces the bride’s own father as
evidence for a story which was plainly regarded
as supernatural. It is most unlucky that Dr.

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92

POSTSCRIPT .

Hickes distrusted his memory. However, it is
something to feel assured that “a memorable
story ” was accepted at the time by the family
of the bride, and was known to Lauderdale. 1
Lauderdale himself, by the way, was a psychical
researcher, and accommodated Richard Baxter
with some accounts of haunted houses, published
in his World of Spirits, One story of a haunted
house, where a spectral hand appeared, he gives
on the authority of “the Rev. James Sharp,”
afterwards the famous Archbishop. Lauderdale
inspected the famed Loudun nuns, and saw
only “ wanton wenches singing baudy songs in
French.” His letter to Mr. Baxter is dated
March 12, 1659. His best haunted house is of
the Epworth type.

1 The letters to Pepys are quoted from his Correspond¬
ence, published as Vol. X. of his Diary (New York,
1885).

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Taboos, Man Worship, Aryan Marriage, Sympathetic Magic,
and the Eating of Beans. (cxxviiL 170 pp.) 1892. ior.

“ Mr. Jevons’s essay is learned and interesting, and in some cases he has probably
found out the reason of behaviour which the Romans could not account for them¬
selves.”— Daily News, Jan. xo, 1893.

“ Allantiquaries and folk-lorists will thank him for enabling them to peruse in a
convenient form that part of Plutarch’s ‘ Moralio ’ which bears upon then: science."
— Daily Chronicle , Jan. 6 , 1893.

“An admirable essay on Roman religion and on the characteristics of Aryan
religion.”— Glasgow Herald, Jan. 5, 1893.

“ Holland’s quaintness and homely vigour make bis translations delightful read¬
ing. A most valuable and interesting introduction is supplied by a sound scholar
and shrewd thinker, Mr. F. B. Jevons.”— Athenaum, Jan. 7, 1893.

“ Holland’s translation, a delightful piece of Elizabethan English, as Mr. Jevons
says, provides a seemly garb for Plutarch’s ancient reasonings. Mr. Jevons’s own
contribution to the volume is, as a help towards a true interpretation, of scarcely
less value than the translation itself.”— Scotsman, Dec. 36, 1893.

“Mr. Jevons’s introduction is at once learned and readable.”— Times, Dec. w»
1893.

“ The editor has supplied an excellent commentary upon some of the most striking
parts in a series of dissertations on Italian cults, myths, taboos, man-worship, Aryan
marriage, sympathetic magic, and the eating of beans. The mere tides of these
essays show the curiosity and interest of the problems dealt with in the text”—
Manchester Guardian, Jan. xo, 1893.

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